We all know how the NBA wants this sto­ry to end. But the Nuggets don’t want to hear it.

Niko­la Jokic and Jamal Mur­ray have lost lost their fear of the big, bad Clip­pers. But beat L.A. in a sev­en-game play­off series? That’s a whole ‘nuther sto­ry, one Amer­i­ca doesn’t want to see.

“There’s no moral vic­to­ries. This is the play­offs. We should’ve won this game,” coach Michael Mal­one lament­ed Mon­day night, after the Nuggets led most of the way, but lost 113–107 in the end.

The Clip­pers weren’t bet­ter than Den­ver. But Kawhi “The Claw” Leonard and Paul George were tougher. When push came to shove in the fourth quar­ter, Mur­ray couldn’t buy a bas­ket and the Nuggets let Game 3 of the series slip away.

“They,” Jokic said, “are a lit­tle more expe­ri­enced in those situations.”

Mur­ray, the cre­ator of 50-point mas­ter­pieces against Utah in Round 1, has dis­cov­ered the hard way that play­off games aren’t always a work of art. At times, the main dif­fer­ence between win­ning and los­ing is noth­ing more than the stronger team impos­ing its will on the weak. The post­sea­son dares even a star on the rise like Mur­ray to burn out from the relent­less grind.

With a men­ac­ing L.A. defense in his face, the Clip­pers crawled inside the head of Mur­ray. He couldn’t shoot straight, miss­ing 12 of 17 field-goal attempts to fin­ish with14 points. When Mur­ray doesn’t score big, the record shows Den­ver doesn’t win in the playoffs.

“It wasn’t real­ly any­thing they did. Not at all. I just missed so many shots,” Mur­ray said.

“I just got to be bet­ter. So put that game on me.”

The NBA bub­ble is a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion. We all know what com­mis­sion­er Adam Sil­ver and ESPN, sweat­ing bul­lets when TV rat­ings for the play­offs got off to a lack­adaisi­cal start, want to see, don’t we?

The West­ern Con­fer­ence finals are a pre-ordained L.A. sto­ry, with Kawhi tak­ing on LeBron, right?

The Nuggets are con­sid­ered lit­tle more than a nui­sance. They’re a cute, lit­tle traf­fic cone, tem­porar­i­ly stand­ing in the way of the inevitable Clip­pers-Lake Show.

“We don’t real­ly care what any­body thinks of us, espe­cial­ly out­side of Col­orado,” Mal­one said pri­or to tip-off.

Itch­ing to throw the us-against-the-world card, Mal­one added: “No one gives this team a chance to do a lot of things.”

Regard­less of the sport, I’m not real big on the no-respect-for-the-lost-time-zone ploy, because all of us that live in Col­orado know that Moun­tain time is the best time.

But for sports fans around the rest of the coun­try, many of whom didn’t know Jamal Mur­ray from Bill Mur­ray a week ago, can I offer a pro tip?

Don’t sleep on the Nuggets. They’re easy to love.

The Clip­pers? Not so much.

If you admire bas­ket­ball for its beau­ty, and rel­ish no-look Jokic pass­es as sweet as Tupe­lo Hon­ey, the Nuggets are your team.

If the sound of break­ing glass is music to your ears, and you slow traf­fic to a crawl rub­ber-neck­ing at a three-car crash, you dig the Clippers.

While coach Doc Rivers is an elo­quent and pow­er­ful spokesman on social-jus­tice issues, behind the closed doors of the L.A. lock­er room he’s an advo­cate of down-and-dirty bul­ly ball.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Labor Day, I took a slow and patient approach to my exten­sive hon­ey-do list, because Jokic is my life coach. In a league of fist pumps and swag­ger, Big Hon­ey admits to rush­ing absolute­ly noth­ing on the court, because he’s too slow to do it any oth­er way.

The Jok­er not only tells jokes, he’s often his own punch line. The Clip­pers don’t roll that way.

With Los Ange­les writ­ten in ride-or-die script across their chests, the Clips are hard fouls and smack talk. They’re also poor losers, which cost guard Patrick Bev­er­ley $25,000 when he described the ref­er­ees’ work dur­ing Denver’s vic­to­ry in Game 2 as pop­py­cock (or some­thing like that).

After Game 3, Bev­er­ley accused Jokic of flail­ing, in a lame attempt to play up that tired Euro­pean hoops stereo­type of flopping.

“I’m just show­ing it is a foul,” said Jokic, duly not­ing the Clip­pers took 26 free throws, com­pared to 10 attempts at the char­i­ty stripe by Denver.

The Nuggets are eager to thrill. Wit­ness how Michael Porter Jr. pos­ter­ized Mon­tre­zl Har­rell with a wind­mill dunk in the third quar­ter, which end­ed with Den­ver ahead by four points

This per­for­mance was first-team all-NBA Jok­er. He scored 32 points to go with 12 rebounds and eight assists.

But in the play­offs, beau­ti­ful bas­ket­ball isn’t enough. The Clip­pers won this game on mean, fin­ish­ing the fourth quar­ter with a 23–10 flur­ry built on cut-no-slack defense.

“These are the tough (loss­es) to go back to the hotel with,” Mur­ray admitted.

With few­er than two min­utes remain­ing in the final peri­od, and the Nuggets trail­ing by six points, Mur­ray went air­borne for a dunk. But Leonard met him at the rim, and reject­ed the slam, with the Claw block­ing the shot with noth­ing more than his mid­dle finger.

The sym­bol­ism was unmis­tak­able, and the mes­sage was clear:

Don’t mess with the Claw, unless you’re strong enough to deal with rejection.

To earn more than moral vic­to­ries, the Nuggets are going to have to be tougher.