The Utah Jazz lost to the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night, and then their coaching got hammered by Charles Barkley afterward.
The Jazz lost Game 6 of their first-round playoff series with the Nuggets 119-107 to even the series at 3-3 and send it to a Game 7. Jamal Murray put up 50 points for Denver and torched Utah for the third game in a row.
“He’s been great,” Barkley said of Murray. “But that Utah team, that’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous to let that guy go 1-on-1 every time and just torch people and get 50 points. I don’t like bashing coaches because they have a very difficult job, but that was (junk) watching that game tonight.
“You got one guy who just kicked your a– with that many points, and you don’t make no adjustments?” Barkley said. “And then with a minute to go in the game they start doubling him when the house was already on fire. You should have done that a quarter ago.”
Shaquille O’Neal agreed and said the Jazz need to make adjustments.
Jazz coach Quin Snyder acknowledged Murray’s outstanding play.
“Other than trapping him, we’re trying to make him hit contested shots, and he’s doing that,” Quin Snyder said of Murray after the game. “He’s playing terrific basketball. We’ve got to do better on him. But he’s been terrific. He’s shooting like 55 percent from three off the dribble. The way he’s playing right now, he’s going to make some shots. There’s other situations that we’ve got to take away. And our discipline defensively has to be there.”
Murray is averaging 47.3 points per game over the last three contests. His postgame interview on TNT was worth watching as well.
Now we’ll have to see whether Snyder and the Jazz make some adjustments for the deciding Game 7 between the teams on Tuesday.
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