How can the Utah Jazz slow Denver’s Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic down the stretch?

As good as Donovan Mitchell’s 57-point performance was for the Utah Jazz, the Nuggets matched him shot for shot down the stretch of Game 1, eventually besting him down the stretch.

That’s been a trend in the Jazz’s games against the Nuggets this season: close contests that the Jazz can’t seem to control late. The two-man game of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray just tore the Jazz to shreds again, as the two players combined for 32 points in the fourth quarter and overtime.

Murray, especially, was sensational. He had 20 of those points, but also had six assists. His shot chart is a thing of beauty over that period: Murray just repeatedly took deep shots and made them over and over again.

Joe Ingles was Murray’s primary defender down the stretch, and while he gives a tip of the cap to Murray’s shooting exploits, he says that there are things he — and the rest of the Jazz — can do to improve their efforts on the 23-year-old Canadian.

“I think they were tough shots, but he’s a good player, so he’s going to make those shots and he did last night,” Ingles said. “I can look at it and break down and probably nit pick a lot of things that I could have done better.”

It’s a little bit evocative of the Jazz’s first playoff series in the Donovan Mitchell era, when they faced the Oklahoma City Thunder. In Game 1 of that series, Paul George scored 36 points on 13-20 shooting. He especially dusted Ingles, his primary defender, from deep — shooting 8 of 11 from 3-point range on that night. After that game, Jazz head coach Quin Snyder challenged Ingles: can Ingles guard one of the NBA’s best wings? Or did he need to get someone else to do the job?

Ingles took on the challenge and really limited George from that point forward, staying physical and aggressive. George became increasingly frustrated, and the culmination was a Game 6 defensive performance in which George shot just 2-of-16 from the field, as the Jazz went on to win the series.

Murray isn’t George, of course: Murray’s a smaller guard, and Ingles may not be as quick as he was two seasons ago. If Ingles isn’t up for the challenge, the Jazz could call upon Royce O’Neale — who had five fouls down the stretch of Game 1, limiting his defensive effectiveness — or even simply call help into the two-man Jokic/Murray game, choosing to leave someone like Paul Millsap or Torrey Craig open to send additional defenders.

“We should give each other help and not play that game two on two. That’s sometimes easier said than done,” Snyder said. “But to give each other help so we don’t have two guys trying to guard those two guys out on the floor.”

Part of the danger of getting other players involved is the overwhelming likelihood of Murray and Jokic making the right play. Jokic in particular is the driver of the entire Nuggets offense: he finished sixth in the entire NBA in total assists this year.

So stopping Jokic isn’t necessarily about necessarily preventing the big man and All-NBA center from scoring, but preventing him from feeling comfortable with his reads on the floor. Again, it becomes about physicality on the man himself, and giving different looks from the other four defenders on the floor.

“[We want to] try to create some uncertainty, to make them a little less comfortable,” Snyder said. “When we talk about ‘stopping Jokic’ here, that’s guarding Denver, because he does so many things.”

Flexibility is key: sending help one possession, playing two-on-two and settling into a drop-big defense, then blitzing the pick and roll next. Of course, the Jazz have to be able to execute each of those defensive plays collectively on a dime. They can’t take time to adjust, or rotate through coverages anything less than seamlessly. Sure, Murray hitting deep shots was fatal, but it’s better than self-imposed mistakes.

“I’m not going to tell you everything that we want to do or anything like that, but obviously we can — me personally and our team — we can give different looks. We can do different things,” Ingles said.

And perhaps, a different result.