Why do these incor­ri­gi­ble Nuggets refuse to listen?

Kawhi Leonard, the scari­est Cyborg in the bas­ket­ball uni­verse, gave them a get-lost glare. And TV ana­lyst Charles Barkley kind­ly packed coach Michael Malone’s undies in a suit­case for a trip back to Col­orado. But the worst team remain­ing in the NBA play­offs stub­born­ly refused to leave the Dis­ney bub­ble, beat­ing the mighty L.A. Clip­pers 111–105 Friday.

Imag­ine that. Maybe the meek do inher­it the Earth. Or at least get anoth­er ride on Space Mountain.

Don’t the Nuggets know they don’t belong here, along­side the real cham­pi­onship con­tenders? These Jok­ers have some nerve, not to men­tion some big Vidalia onions.

“We’re at our best with our backs against the wall,” guard Jamal Mur­ray said after his team won an elim­i­na­tion game for the fourth time in this tourney.

How did the Nuggets do it? How did they recov­er from a 16-point deficit and leave a scowl on the face of Clip­pers coach Doc Rivers?

Well, let’s start by giv­ing cred­it where cred­it is due, to none oth­er than the Round Mound of Rebound.

With the Nuggets trail­ing 56–44 at half­time, the tele­cast shift­ed to the TNT stu­dio, site of the most enter­tain­ing and out­ra­geous game-day show in all of sports, where Ernie John­son tries gal­lant­ly to keep Barkley under con­trol. And he fails mis­er­ably, because nobody can con­tain Sir Charles, much to the nation’s delight.

Stick­ing a fork in the Nuggets, Barkley guar­an­teed the Clip­pers were going to win Game 5 by 20 points.

“Denver’s already packed!” gloat­ed Barkley, rub­bing it in. “If the Bron­cos are play­ing Sun­day, (the Nuggets) can go to prac­tice (Sat­ur­day) … Guar­an­tee! Guarantee!”

Thank you, Chuck­ster. Thank you very much.

“As far as Charles Barkley? We’re not going home yet. We ain’t gone fish­ing yet,” replied Mal­one, when I inquired about the effect of Barkley’s guarantee.

“We’re going to live to play a Game No. 6, try to stretch this series out and try to win it. I know everybody’s excit­ed about the Lak­ers play­ing the Clip­pers in the West­ern Con­fer­ence finals, but we’re hop­ing to say some­thing about that.”

But, truth be told, there was one fac­tor big­ger in the Nuggets’ won­drous come­back than the Barkley Guar­an­tee Effect, which oh-so-often jinx­es the team he blesses.

Dur­ing the final minute of the open­ing half, Clip­pers for­ward Mar­cus Mor­ris, who cul­ti­vates his rep­u­ta­tion as an ornery son of a gun, got tan­gled up with mus­cu­lar Nuggets vet­er­an Paul Mill­sap. A heat­ed argu­ment, aug­ment­ed by the required chest-puff­ing and spit­tle exchange, ensued until the two play­ers had to be separated.

“That was a huge (moment) that nobody will prob­a­bly talk about,” Mal­one said. “When you have a sea­soned vet­er­an who has had enough and wasn’t going to sit there and take it, he stood up. I thought his response to that sit­u­a­tion real­ly helped our team respond.”

What choice words were exchanged between Mill­sap and Mor­ris? Our sen­si­tive ears will prob­a­bly nev­er know. Mill­sap, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed Mor­ris called his team­mates the worst four-let­ter word in sports.

“I think it was the words that they’ve been talk­ing all series. I mean, I know the word on us is we’re soft,” Mill­sap said.

For the first time all series, the Nuggets refused to back down. Dur­ing a heat­ed dis­cus­sion under the bas­ket, Mill­sap got right back in the face of Mor­ris, jaw-to-jaw and yap­ping, so close both play­ers could iden­ti­fy what each oth­er ate for lunch.

“We’re not going to let these guys come in here and just push us around. I think that’s what real­ly sparked it,” Mill­sap said. “We want­ed to prove a point that we’re not going to be bul­lied, that we’re not going to be intimidated.”

More impor­tant, Mill­sap backed up his puffed chest by scor­ing 14 points in the third quar­ter. It was not only his best stretch of bas­ket­ball in the bub­ble by a wide mar­gin, but his relent­less ener­gy seemed to infuse team­mates with a we’re-not-going-to-take-it atti­tude nec­es­sary to put away the Clip­pers in the fourth quar­ter, when Michael Porter Jr. hit the biggest shot and made the biggest block in clutch time.

“We have belief,” Mal­one said. “I know there’s not a lot of belief. I heard one of the com­men­ta­tors the oth­er day say: ‘Eight teams are left in the bub­ble, and sev­en of them have a chance to win a cham­pi­onship.’ We’re the one he did not think had a chance to win a cham­pi­onship. But we do not lis­ten to all that. We believe in ourselves.”

These Nuggets are the incor­ri­gi­ble chil­dren of the Dis­ney bub­ble. They don’t lis­ten. They don’t behave. They refuse to go home. They just keep cut­ting in line, for anoth­er ride on Space Mountain.

Hang on. This wild ride ain’t over yet.