They dressed in black and walked the line, star­ing down self-doubt and all that Jazz, then achieved some­thing tougher than any Nuggets team in fran­chise his­to­ry has ever done.

“Have to give a big shout out to John­ny Cash,” coach Michael Mal­one said Tues­day, after Den­ver edged Utah 80–78 in Game7 to recov­er from a 3–1 play­off series hole.

The Nuggets sur­vived. And advanced. But care­ful what you wish for. Now, Jamal Mur­ray and Niko­la Jokic are going to get a fist­ful of rage from the big, bad Los Ange­les Clip­pers, who aren’t afraid to play dirty.

We know Den­ver couldn’t have beat­en Utah with­out the scor­ing sor­cery of Mur­ray or the line­up over­haul made by Mal­one when this sea­son was on the brink. And let’s blow a kiss to Lady Luck, who yanked a 3‑point shot by Jazz guard Mike Con­ley out of the bas­ket at the final buzzer.

But John­ny Cash? Explain. Please.

“Three games in a row, we dressed in black,” Mal­one said. “And we’re mov­ing on.”

One game from play­off elim­i­na­tion on a sad Sun­day more than a week ago, the Nuggets could have men­tal­ly checked out, begun pack­ing up their belong­ings and got the heck out of the NBA bubble.

“A lot of teams would’ve giv­en in, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er we’ve been here 57 days, away from our fam­i­lies,” Mal­one said. “Do we real­ly want to extend our stay? And that’s where pride comes into play. Our play­ers, they want­ed it.”

Rather than quit, the Nuggets turned the tide. The vio­lent death of Jacob Blake in Wis­con­sin gave Mur­ray and his team­mates a cause so pow­er­ful they could not hide. And when this series — which ele­vat­ed a young guard from both Den­ver and Utah in the eyes of a bas­ket­ball world — final­ly end­ed, Utah’s Dono­van Mitchell col­lapsed on the court face down, phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly spent.

Then Mur­ray, whose emo­tion­al trib­utes to Blacks lives lost touched so many hearts across the coun­try, com­mit­ted one more ran­dom act of kind­ness. When Mur­ray could’ve cel­e­brat­ed vic­to­ry with his Den­ver team­mates, he instead walked toward Mitchell, leaned over and gen­tly rubbed the back of a van­quished com­peti­tor that has been his foe since they played col­lege hoops at Ken­tucky and Louisville.

“Why? (Mitchell) willed his team every game, win or lose. He had that fight. And you’ve got to show respect,” said Mur­ray, who aver­aged 31.6 points per game in this series.

“It was a great bat­tle. And it’s not going to be the only one. We expect to see each oth­er a lot in the future. He raised how I played the game. And raised his. We go at it. It’s a whole lot of fun. We bring the best out of each other.”

So let’s raise a toast to these Nuggets, who near­ly blew a 14-point half­time lead in Game 7, only to gut out a win with hard-nosed defen­sive stops time and again in a fourth quar­ter so painful­ly uptight it was some­times hard to .

Salute!

But the Nuggets bet­ter throw that cel­e­bra­to­ry drink down the hatch fast. Get some rest. And lace up their sneak­ers tight. They have to be back on the court Thurs­day night to face the Los Ange­les Clip­pers in the open­ing game of Round 2.

The Clip­pers talk smack. And smack you upside the head. They’re mean. They’re arro­gant. And they’re dirty.

Doubt it? Ask Dal­las guard Luka Don­cic, sprawled to the floor by a karate chop to his head and shoul­ders by Clip­pers for­ward Mar­cus Mor­ris in the close-out game of the open­ing round.

“It was a ter­ri­ble play. What can I say?” com­plained Don­cic, before adding: “I don’t want to deal with that type of player.”

To which Mor­ris retort­ed: “Cry me a river.”

Remem­ber when Mur­ray and Utah’s Joe Ingles bumped legs at mid­court in Game 7, send­ing Denver’s bril­liant young point guard tum­bling to the floor in pain? It was an accident.

The Clip­pers will try to bruise and intim­i­date Mur­ray on pur­pose, because that’s the old-school way that a team coached by Doc Rivers plays. Kawhi Leonard and Mon­tre­zl Har­rell will steal Denver’s Chee­tos and eat their lunch.

Are the Nuggets ready for this?

“It’s men­tal­ly tough to stay (in the bub­ble). We’ve been here 56, 57 days,” said Mur­ray, who marks each 24 hours off his cal­en­dar. But he doesn’t want to go home.

“We don’t plan on leav­ing,” Mur­ray said.

Jamal Mur­ray had already bro­ken the fran­chise record for most points scored by a Nuggets play­er in a play­off series before the ball was even tipped for Game 7 against the Jazz. His 17 on Tues­day night were just icing on the cake, while Niko­la Jokic’s 30 points cat­a­pult­ed him to a tie for fourth.