The Denver Nuggets defeated the Utah Jazz 80-78 in Game 7 on Tuesday, making the Western Conference Semifinals. This was Denver's third straight win since they trailed 3-1 in the series and they were the 12th team in NBA history to achieve such comeback victory in the playoffs.

Before this game, most of the attention already went to Utah's Donovan Mitchell and Denver's Jamal Murray. Both were hopeful of breaking the scoring record in the first-round playoffs kept by LeBron James. In the end, Mitchell scored 22 points in the game, taking James' record his own. Meanwhile, he (254 points) and Murray (221 points) together dropped 475 points, surpassing the previous record of combined points (463 points) by opposing players in single series kept by Jerry West and John Havlicek in the 1969 NBA Finals.

Mitchell also broke several other records. He has averaged 36.3 points per game and enjoyed field goal, 3-point and free throw rate of 52.9, 51.6 and 94.8 percent respectively. Such crazy performance made Mitchell the first player in league history to put down 35+points at 50+percent FG and 3-point rates, as well as 90+percent free throw rate. He also sank 33 triples in the series, breaking Stephen Curry's record (32) of making the most threes in single series.

However, Mitchell and Utah were eliminated by Murray and Denver.

"This isn't the last of it. This is me scratching the surface. I know what I can do, how hard I've worked, how hard this team has worked. This won't be the end of it. That's what's fueling me. This ain't the end. This is just the beginning. I'm ready to go hoop again right now. I think we all are. This is just the beginning," said Mitchell after the game.

Game 7 has always been special in any series. Neither side had any secret left when the contest came this far. Since it's "win or go home" for both teams, their coaches and players would understandably be way more careful. More efforts and attention would naturally go to defense. Avoiding making mistakes beat putting up highlights in importance.

That explained why Mitchell and Murray could not score like they did – Mitchell had 22 points and Murray got 17. Utah's offense almost froze in the first half, in which they trailed 50-36. Of course, Denver went through similar difficulties in the second half in which they only scored 30 points.

When Utah trailed 80-78 in the last quarter, they still had two timeouts and 27.8 seconds left. Coach Quin Snyder called a time timeout and gave Utah's players instructions over how to play the next possession. Then Mitchell lost the ball to Gary Harris, but Torrey Craig then missed an easy layup, leaving Utah the last shot, which was then missed by Mike Conley.

Despite all the usual scenes above, Denver's win was established on the solid performance of Nikola Jokic who dropped 30 points, 14 rebounds and four assists. In the last 30 seconds of Q4, he posted up against Rudy Gobert and made the game-winning hook shot in front the two-time Defensive Player of the Year.

"We are not in a Game 7 without Jamal, but quietly, Nikola Jokic was having an outstanding series, as well. And you knew that they would take away Jamal Murray; they tried to do different things tonight, that was their adjustment. We were prepared for that. We knew they would try to get the ball out of his hands. That is when you need Nikola to step up," said Mike Malone, head coach of Denver.

Denver will meet the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals on Thursday.

Raptors did better this time but not good enough

The Toronto Raptors lost again to the Boston Celtics 102-99 in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, trailing 2-0 in the series.

Compared with their 112-94 loss in Game 1, Toronto improved their performance in a lot of ways. For example, they did not rush for speed from the beginning. Instead, the whole team kept making decent passes to find teammates for open threes. Pascal Siakam had better touch too as he managed to score twice in a row by posting against Jaylen Brown. The whole team only committed 12 turnovers (Boston had 17) in the game. Fred VanVleet got 14 points in the first half. Toronto led 78-70 before the last quarter.

Then Q4 exposed the biggest problem Toronto still have: lack of clutch-time solution. When Marcus Smart suddenly exploded to bury five triples in a row, Toronto had no response to that as they went 5-21 in FGs and 1-11 in 3-pointers. Siakam only got two points via free throws. VanVleet went 1-7.

"We're down 0-2 but we have to go back, look at the film, understand what we've done wrong and what we could do better. This is not a situation we'd like to be in but it's not a normal situation in the playoffs where we lost two home games, we just lost two games," said Kyle Lowry OF Toronto after the game.

"He (Smart) does whatever needs to be done to win. Tonight, we needed a little jolt offensively. We missed some open shots against that zone at the end of the third, early fourth. But then he made a bunch in a row and loosens up the D," said Brad Steven, head coach of Boston.

As for Boston, though it was Smart's incredible shooting performance that reversed the situation for the team, Jayson Tatum was the one doing his job do keep the game alive when no one could score. In the third quarter, Boston only had 20 points and 13 came from Tatum. The 22-year-old put down 34 points, eight rebounds and six assists in the whole game, becoming the first Celtic who had three 30+point playoff games before turning 24.

Game 3 of the series will take place on Thursday.