Nuggets escape Utah Jazz with furious late comeback, Cam Johnson game-winner

Bennett Durando, The Denver Post on Mar 27, 2026

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DENVER — David Adelman had no choice but to burn through his timeouts.

He had only two remaining with 18 minutes of game time left, as a sluggish and sloppy quintet sauntered into the huddle to the tune of light boos. The Jazz had opened up a double-digit lead in the second half, and Ball Arena was miffed.

That lead crept to a maximum of 14 with 3:17 left in the third quarter before Denver started taking its tanking visitors seriously in a 135-129 win Friday. It was still 10 with 5:29 to go in the fourth as Nikola Jokic struggled suddenly to find his shooting touch. The Nuggets ended the game on a 21-5 run and a catharsis, as Jamal Murray nailed a dagger 3-pointer and played to the crowd that had jeered his team not long ago.

Cam Johnson, after struggling most of the night, buried a game-tying 3-pointer with 2:18 remaining and the eventual game-winner with 45 seconds left. The latter was a second-chance bucket after Jokic rebounded a rare miss by Tim Hardaway Jr., who scored 21 points and was a plus-25 off the bench.

The recipe for near-disaster was fairly predictable. The Nuggets played lackadaisical 1-on-1 and pick-and-roll defense on the perimeter. Their rim protection was even worse, conceding 84 points in the paint. And they kicked the ball around offensively, allowing Utah to score more than 30 points off 14 turnovers. Nikola Jokic was responsible for seven himself, on the heels of an immaculate pair of passing games earlier this week.

Jokic still managed to compile 33 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists. But his counterpart, Utah center Kyle Filipowski, scored a season-high 25 points to go with eight boards and five assists. Utah was unbothered by the absence of breakout star Keyonte George, in addition to Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr., both of whom are likely to miss the rest of the season. Colorado Buffs alum Cody Williams contributed 24 points for the Jazz.

The Nuggets, meanwhile, were at full strength for only the second time since November; Aaron Gordon and Peyton Watson had traded nights off Tuesday and Wednesday, as the team didn’t want either of them to play both games of a back-to-back.

Gordon amassed 17 points and seven boards Friday, but Watson struggled in his 21 minutes. He committed four turnovers on a 2-for-10 shooting night. Hardaway was often Denver’s only source of hope off the bench. Desperate to will his team back into the game, the veteran guard knocked down a series of timely 3s throughout the second half.

The Nuggets (47-28) moved one game ahead of fifth-place Minnesota and two ahead of sixth-place Houston with the win, their fifth in a row.

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