NBA Game Summary - Utah at Denver
Denver, CO (SportsNetwork.com) - Derrick Favors scored 21 points and pulled down 10 rebounds to lead the Utah Jazz to a 104-82 rout of the struggling Denver Nuggets.
Trey Burke chipped in 19 points off the bench and Gordon Hayward scored 15 for the hot-shooting Jazz. Rodney Hood had 14 points in a reserve role for Utah, which shot 57.4 percent from the field.
The Jazz won for the fifth time in seven tries and dealt Denver its fifth consecutive defeat.
"It was good to see over the course of the game our team had a really good focus," Jazz coach Quinn Snyder said.
Snyder was also impressed at his team's 15 blocks including 15 from Rudy Gobert.
Will Barton scored 22 and Kenneth Faried added 12 points and eight boards, both off the bench, for Denver. Danilo Gallinari had 13 points in the Nuggets' 18th loss in 20 games.
The Nuggets were without Darrell Arthur (right calf strain) and Jusuf Nurkic (right ankle sprain).
"That was a big part of it," Nuggets coach Brian Shaw said referring to the 50 points in the paint his team allowed. "We need to stop the penetration right at the point of the pick and rolls were happening. We didn't do that. We weren't taking anything away."
Utah bolted out to a sizeable lead by shooting 61.1 percent in the opening quarter, while limiting Denver to 5-of-21. After Gallinari hit a free throw only 18 seconds into the game, the Jazz scored seven in a row, capped by a Gobert layup. The run extended to a 17-3 Utah cushion following a Hayward three-point play.
The visitors were up 28-17 after 12 minutes and extended it to 50-34 at the break.
A 9-1 burst at the end of the third moved the margin to 80-53, and Utah cruised in the fourth.