SALT LAKE CITY — Two of the Nuggets’ worst irra­tional night­mares con­verged for a chill­ing stint.

The sec­ond quar­ter and the state of Utah.

In an occa­sion­al­ly shaky per­for­mance, the result was all that mat­tered Tues­day night as Den­ver con­quered both fears in a 111–95 win over the end-of-year rem­nants of the Utah Jazz. It was just the sec­ond win for Michael Mal­one and Niko­la Jokic at Delta Cen­ter in their respec­tive Nuggets tenures, snap­ping a six-game los­ing streak in Salt Lake City.

“I’m just glad we won the game,” Jokic said.

The Nuggets (55–24) remain dead­locked with the Min­neso­ta Tim­ber­wolves for first place in the West­ern Con­fer­ence with three games remain­ing for both teams — most impor­tant­ly the one Wednes­day, when the Tim­ber­wolves vis­it Den­ver in a show­down that will break the tie. If the Nuggets lose, they’ll be posi­tioned to fin­ish as the No. 3 seed unless they get help from Okla­homa City.

“As I told our play­ers,” Mal­one said, “let’s go home and we’ve got a big game in our build­ing against a divi­sion rival and a team that we’re bat­tling for first place. … Let’s go com­pete and then see what happens.”

To make it to that pre­mier matchup unscathed, Jamal Mur­ray had to defin­i­tive­ly shake off any rust from the sev­en games he recent­ly missed. He reg­is­tered four steals and three blocks at the defen­sive end — “He’s just going for stats; he doesn’t real­ly play defense,” Jokic joked — while shoot­ing 11 for 20 en route to a game-lead­ing 28 points. ”

Those includ­ed a career-high five dunks — all by half­time. A vicious reverse slam stood out in par­tic­u­lar as a sign of his health.

“I came up the right wing; I was gonna shoot a three,” Mur­ray said. “He wasn’t in posi­tion to stay in front, so I just went to the rim, and once I gath­ered, I was like, ‘I don’t think he’s gonna be able to stop this if I just keep going through.’ So I was able to get the reverse.”

It also helped Den­ver build a 19-point lead in the first quar­ter. Only for the dread­ed sec­ond to enact its usu­al rever­sal of fate. The Nuggets entered this game ranked 21st in the NBA in sec­ond-quar­ter net rat­ing (minus‑3.5) and 29th in sec­ond-quar­ter defen­sive rat­ing (119). After dou­bling up Utah’s 17 points in the first frame Tues­day, they allowed 36 in the sec­ond. That estab­lished the tenor for the rest of the game, as Utah scrapped to stay with­in sin­gle digits.

“I think our defense has been great over­all, and you’re not gonna play out­stand­ing defense for 48 min­utes. It just doesn’t hap­pen,” Mal­one said in a change of tone after hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly empha­sized those sec­ond-quar­ter strug­gles as a must-fix ear­li­er this season.

Late in the third, a 3‑pointer from the hot hand of Tal­en Hor­ton-Tuck­er sliced Denver’s lead in half. It remained a one-score game for only a few sec­onds; Reg­gie Jack­son answered with the only three of his 1‑for‑6 night, jump-start­ing a use­ful 7–0 run. Hor­ton-Tuck­er was a phys­i­cal force for the Jazz, scor­ing 24 points to keep the game inter­est­ing with Lau­ri Markka­nen, Collin Sex­ton, John Collins, Walk­er Kessler, Kris Dunn and Jor­dan Clark­son all sit­ting out.

The Nuggets, mean­while, were miss­ing only Aaron Gor­don as they con­tin­ued their push for the top seed. The most ben­e­fi­cial goal they can accom­plish this week aside from earn­ing home-court advan­tage is get­ting Mur­ray reac­cli­mat­ed before the play­offs. As he warmed up, Mal­one popped out to the court to check on him and watch the pregame rou­tine from the bench for sev­er­al min­utes, drib­bling a ball between his legs while observ­ing. Mur­ray is still on a min­utes restric­tion — Mal­one played coy when asked for the num­ber — but he looked as fresh as he had all game when Den­ver need­ed him most in the fourth quarter.

“Sev­en games off will do that for you,” Mur­ray said. “So I feel good. It’s just good to get a flow out there. It’s more con­di­tion­ing. Your breath­ing and mus­cle fatigue through­out the game. … Felt good, com­fort­able and just ready to play.”

Lead­ing 95–88, Mur­ray sank three con­sec­u­tive 3‑pointers in as many pos­ses­sions to self-engi­neer a 9–2 run and final­ly help his team see the light out­side Utah’s house of hor­rors. He clocked a total of 27 minutes.

“More impor­tant is the 3s,” Mur­ray said. “More fun is the dunks.”

Jokic added 28 points, 13 rebounds, sev­en assists and three steals in an imper­fect per­for­mance for his stan­dards. Chris­t­ian Braun fueled the Nuggets ear­ly with 11 points on a trio of 3s.

Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insid­er to get all our NBA analysis.