Six lessons learned — both good and bad — from the Utah Jazz’s streak-breaking defeat in Denver

Sometimes, after a previously hot team loses, a player from that team can be heard telling the assembled media that the loss is actually a good thing, that it was a necessary dose of humility to ultimately make them better.

It’s a trite cliché, and one that no Utah Jazz player uttered following Sunday’s humbling-indeed 128-117 loss to the Denver Nuggets which marked the termination of their much-celebrated 11-game win streak. You’d be right in suspecting the Jazz would be perfectly fine with being taught their lessons while still managing to go a perfect 72-0 this regular season and 16-0 in the coming playoffs.

Alas, as that’s not really possible, though, they will settle for trying to at least put this defeat to good future use: “This is a loss — we learn from it and move on,” Donovan Mitchell said afterward.

Just so (trite cliché notwithstanding).

And, fortuitously for him and his teammates, there were lessons aplenty to be gleaned from it. More fortunate still: Not all of them were even of the “Well, that was awful; let’s not do that again” variety. Here’s a look at some of the takeaways from Sunday, including a few glass-half-full ones:

Negative: Not bringing it from the start

It’s not unusual for the Jazz to say after a loss that they didn’t bring the right energy or intensity from the start of the game; whether that’s typically a cop-out or not, it was pretty apparent that they didn’t have anything for Nuggets All-Star center Nikola Jokic early on Sunday.

He finished with a career-high-tying 47 points — and 22 of them came in the first quarter, and 33 of them occurred in the first half. Jazz big man Derrick Favors, who was one of many to fail to contain Jokic, noted that trying to slow or stop someone as good as Jokic after he’s already found a rhythm and comfort level becomes incredibly difficult.

“That’s tough — once a player is going and they start hitting shots, especially somebody his caliber that gets 20 shots or whatever, it’s kind of tough to take that player out of his zone,” Favors said. “… In the second half, we made it a little bit more tough for him, but by that time he was already going — the whole team was hitting shots and they were on fire.”

Positive: Still historically prolific from 3

While most of the attention paid to 3-pointers Sunday was rightly focused on Denver going 15 of 17 in the first half, finishing with 18 total and shooting 64.3% for the game, it almost went unnoticed that the Jazz actually wound up making more 3s than their counterparts.

Their 20-for-47 effort from deep accomplished a few things: It was their NBA record-tying 10th consecutive game with at least 15 made 3s, and it gave them an NBA-record 285 made 3s in a month (besting the previous mark of 279 set by the Rockets in December 2016).

“You know, we’re not having any trouble scoring,” Rudy Gobert noted wryly after the loss.

Negative: Too many turnovers, not enough transition

Quin Snyder frequently mentions the importance of the Jazz running — both to generate open looks on offense, and to shut down opposing teams’ fast-break attempts.

They didn’t do enough of either Sunday.

The four paltry fast-break points they managed were no real surprise — it’s hard to get out and run when you’re taking the ball out of the net every time.

The bigger issue was their transition defense. While the 15 turnovers Utah committed were pretty much right in line with their season average, which is to say, still too many (14.7 per game — 19th), usually Jazz are middle of the pack in allowing opponents 17.2 ppg off of their turnovers. But on Sunday, Denver scored a whopping 28 points off Jazz errors.

Positive: Living at the line

In part owing to the nature of being a prolific 3-point shooting team, the Jazz are not among the league’s best at getting (21.1 per game — 22nd) or making (15.8 pg — 25th) free throws. The latter is further hurt by a pedestrian conversion rate (74.8% — 22nd).

But on Sunday, Utah showed it can find a balance between launching 3s and still getting into the lane and earning some easy points. The Jazz set season-highs in both free throws made (33) and attempted (39). And their 84.6% conversion rate was their fourth-best mark of the season.

Another good sign is that they came from multiple players, too: Bojan Bogdanovic led in both makes (8) and attempts (10), Rudy Gobert went 4 for 8, Mike Conley made all seven of his tries … even little-used Shaq Harrison went 4 for 4 at the stripe in three garbage-time minutes.

Negative: On the wrong end of quarter-closing runs

The Jazz have been so good this season at finishing quarters strong — taking the last few minutes of a period and using it either to make a small lead bigger, make a big deficit smaller, or to turn a small deficit into a small lead.

But they were on the other end of that Sunday.

At the 2:54 mark the second period, they’d battled back a little bit and closed their gap to 66-50, and looked to be in position for one of their patented strong finishes. Instead, the Jazz went 1 for 4 from the field (and 2 of 2 from the line) and committed a turnover down the stretch, while the Nuggets closed on a 13-4 run that ballooned their lead back to 25.

Then in the third, a huge surge by the Jazz got them as close as 99-91 with a minute to go. A few more good possessions could have maybe put a serious squeeze on Denver. Instead, in those final 60 seconds, Utah allowed a Jokic layup, turned the ball over, committed a foul that led to two Facundo Campazzo free throws, and then missed a pair of 3-pointers. Denver’s little 4-0 run there, coupled with a 12-5 run in the first 2:20 of the fourth quarter made it a 19-point lead that effectively ended the comeback.

Positive: Another strong Bogey game

A second straight efficient performance from Bogdanovic has to be considered a silver lining.

One game after scoring a game-high 32 points against Dallas, he was really the only Jazz player in a consistently good flow offensively against Denver, totaling 29 more points Sunday.

In addition to the aforementioned free throws, Bogdanovic also hit 8 of 13 shots from the field, including a 5-for-10 effort from deep.

“That last game against Dallas really helped him see how he can kind of get going. Certain layups that he was missing, he’s starting to make; he’s starting to make [things] easier for him running in transition; shooting instead of pump faking — whatever it may be for him. And he’s looking good,” Mitchell said. “… That’s going to be huge for us, just being able to integrate him back. I think this is just a start for him. But we’ve got to continue helping him — because he was there for us offensively, we didn’t really have much else.”