LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – The Nuggets’ bub­ble is about to burst. Their pathet­ic defense suc­ceeds only as an exer­cise in social dis­tanc­ing. Injured starter Will Bar­ton has gone home. And his team­mates act­ed as if they didn’t want to be here dur­ing a dis­tress­ing 124–105 play­off loss to Utah on Wednesday.

“We can’t be afraid to look in the mir­ror and see why we lost,” Den­ver coach Michael Mal­one said afterward.

The first per­son requir­ing deep reflec­tion is Mal­one. He’s paid to make tough deci­sions. It’s time to bench vet­er­an for­ward Paul Mill­sap, who has been $30 mil­lion of dead weight since Den­ver arrived in Flori­da more than a month ago.

Insert Jera­mi Grant in the start­ing lineup.

Yes, Mal­one will be tempt­ed to stay the course. But just as he reluc­tant­ly benched a strug­gling Bar­ton in order to sur­vive a first-round scare from San Anto­nio a year ago, Mal­one must con­tem­plate a line­up change again now.

“We’re not going to pan­ic after a loss,” Mal­one insisted.

Pan­ic? There’s no need.

But if Den­ver wants to avoid a first-round upset, something’s got to change in a big way. And pronto.

With the best-of-sev­en series tied 1–1 but momen­tum shame­less­ly mak­ing goo-goo eyes at the Jazz, it’s long past time for the Den­ver front office to flush fool­ish pride down the same drain where Tim Con­nel­ly tossed a three-year deal (for the ridicu­lous amount of $90 mil­lion) to Millsap.

With an app on my cell phone show­ing test results that proved me to be COVID-free, I was grant­ed admis­sion for the first time to be an eye-wit­ness in the NBA bub­ble. Know one of the most strik­ing things about the Hoops House of the Mouse on the Dis­ney campus?

Every­thing, from vir­tu­al fans on giant mon­i­tors to a cam­era mount­ed on a track chug­ging up and down the side­line oppo­site the team bench­es, is metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed, with enough tech­no­log­i­cal artistry to impress Elon Musk. But …

Games here feel more like they’re being staged on the set of a TV game show than inside an are­na where you can smell both the beer breath and the pas­sion of thou­sands of crazed fans smushed together.

Why is this important?

Despite the league’s best efforts to pump up the vol­ume with an end­less playlist of par­ty tunes played on top of canned crowd noise, it’s almost eerie how a los­ing team stews in silence as a game slips away.

“We have to get on each oth­er more. We’ve got to keep the ener­gy up,” Nuggets guard Jamal Mur­ray said.”I feel like we got flat, espe­cial­ly that third quarter.”

Since the days when George Mikan and glo­ri­ous bas­ket­ball dinosaurs roamed the earth, there’s been a ten­den­cy for a team that wins the play­off series-open­er to relax and be rocked by the intense des­per­a­tion of its foe in Game 2.

That’s pre­cise­ly what hap­pened on this sun­ny Flori­da after­noon, when the Nuggets couldn’t ral­ly with­out the uplift­ing noise of Pep­si Cen­ter, which they missed almost as much as Bar­ton. He has decid­ed after weeks of fail­ing to get an aching knee healthy to depart the bub­ble and seek more focused rehab elsewhere.

Den­ver fans are as loud and proud as any in Amer­i­ca. Maybe they could’ve pulled the Nuggets out of their funk, before the team got whacked with a 43–29 Utah ham­mer shot in the third quarter.

“We guard­ed nobody,” Mal­one harrumphed.

Well, you have to admire the Nuggets for being coro­n­avirus aware and dili­gent­ly stay­ing at least 6 feet away when­ev­er Dono­van Mitchell, Joe Ingles or Jor­dan Clark­son launched a shot from beyond the 3‑point arc. When Utah took an 81–62 lead with six min­utes, 13 sec­onds, remain­ing in the third peri­od, the Jazz had been ridicu­lous­ly accu­rate with the 3‑ball, mak­ing 16-of-29 attempts.

Den­ver is down two injured starters, and at this point, it’s prob­a­bly wish­ful think­ing to expect Gary Har­ris to con­tribute much more to the cause than Bar­ton, who sounds as if he might be done for the playoffs.

“For us, it means we have to step up,” said for­ward Michael Porter Jr., who scored 28 points. “One of our best play­ers is out. If we want to do big things out here, it’s going to take a team effort and we’re all going to have to step up in a major way.”

Mal­one needs to short­en his rota­tion and stop hop­ing for a mir­a­cle from Mill­sap. He has been awful for more than a month, aver­ag­ing a measly 8.3 points and 4.2 rebounds while shoot­ing 43.3% from the field.

Aver­ag­ing 15.5 points in the bub­ble and much more adept at get­ting out to pres­sure Utah’s 3‑point attempts, shouldn’t insert­ing Grant in Millsap’s place be a no-brainer?

The lop­sided nature of this loss stung. But it’s time to move on. “If we let this stay with us going into Game 3, it will be more of the same,” Mal­one said.

A hurt­ing team can­not afford to have any­thing less than its five best play­ers on the court.

Bench Mill­sap. Start Grant.