SALT LAKE CITY — Before Melvin Hunt met the media, he first met with the team and then had a chat with Nuggets assistant general manager Arturas Karnisovas. Things had quickly gone awry in a 98-84 loss to the Utah Jazz at Energy-Solutions Arena on Wednesday night. There needed to be multiple pow-wows to make sense of it.
By the time Hunt spoke, he had settled in on what he believed to be the issue in a game where the two middle quarters took a game the Nuggets had control of, and sent it to a free fall — himself.
“Our energy changed,” Nuggets coach Melvin Hunt said. “I made some tough substitutions. I think I put some funky lineups out there and probably cost us a little bit of rhythm in that second quarter.”
The second quarter conjured up images of earlier in the season, when catastrophic quarters marred games. But the Jazz made certain the Nuggets’ struggles weren’t confined to just one quarter.
Nuggets Mailbag:
The second and third were an ode to Utah’s improved defense under coach Quin Snyder.
The Nuggets were held to 30 points total in the two quarters, going 11-for-46 (23.9 percent) from the field. It was quickly a sinking ship, given the Nuggets made 12-of-25 shots and scored 29 points in the first quarter.
“We played very good defense in the first quarter,” forward Danilo Gallinari said. “The second quarter, we didn’t play our defense. They were able to go out and have a (32-13) quarter. We cannot allow ourselves to have those kinds of quarters.
“That was the game.”
Defensively, the Jazz plugged the lane regularly and cut off any semblance of a transition game. About the only shot consistently available was from the 3-point line — and the Nuggets obliged by hoisting 33 of them, but they only made seven.
“We didn’t make shots,” Hunt said. “And that’s a little bit of a lame excuse, but we created shots from penetration and we didn’t knock them down.”
They were outscored 59-30 in the second and third, setting up the stage for a play-it-out fourth.
The Nuggets were led by Kenneth Faried’s 19 points and 10 rebounds, as he did his best to battle inside against 7-foot center Rudy Gobert and 6-10 forward Derrick Favors, both space eaters in the paint.
Favors and Gobert combined for 39 points and 19 rebounds.
“I thought we played hard. We competed. Everybody got after it,” Faried said. “Coach wanted to get some guys in, in the second quarter and our offensive onslaught just kind of slid, kind of went down. We’ve got to continue to play defense, that’s it.
“Our defense ignites our offense and we’ve got to continue to do that.”
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or
