It’s almost as viper­ous as LeBron James. It’s invis­i­ble, yet looms almost as large as Antho­ny Davis. And it’s one of the things, as a coach, that Michael Mal­one fears most.

Are the Nuggets just hap­py to be here?

Are they con­tent with the fact they made NBA his­to­ry, becom­ing the first team ever to erase back-to-back 3–1 post­sea­son series deficits? Are they appeased with just get­ting to con­ga with King James and AD in the NBA’s West­ern Con­fer­ence finals?

“I think the biggest ques­tion, aside from the scheme and plays and per­son­nel is, ‘Are our guys sat­is­fied?’” Mal­one said Thurs­day in advance of Game 1 of Nuggets-Lak­ers, which tips off Fri­day night in Lake Bue­na Vista, Fla.

“’Hey, man, we just made play­off his­to­ry. Down 3–1, down 3–1, we got to the West­ern Con­fer­ence finals (for) only the (third) time in fran­chise his­to­ry.’ PHEW! (You) man­age to take a breath, come up for air.

“And the Lak­ers aren’t com­ing up for air. They’ve been wait­ing. And I know LeBron, hav­ing been around him. They’re going to come out and try to send a mes­sage (Fri­day). And I don’t think their guys are satisfied.”

The top-seed­ed Lak­ers, who squashed Hous­ton over five games in the semis and did the same to Port­land in the first round, are on a mis­sion. The Nuggets are on a mag­ic car­pet ride, hav­ing upset the sec­ond-seed­ed Clip­pers to reach the franchise’s first con­fer­ence finals in 11 years.

They’re also danc­ing with his­to­ry yet again. Although the prece­dent ain’t pret­ty: Den­ver has nev­er beat­en the Lak­ers over six post­sea­son meet­ings all-time. And the only oth­er occa­sions in which the Nuggets have reached a con­fer­ence final — in 1985 and 2009 — they were elim­i­nat­ed by the Lake Show.

Then again, for a ros­ter that’s made most of its hay with one arm tied behind its back, it wouldn’t be the Nuggets if they didn’t have some psy­cho­log­i­cal hole to crawl out of first. Right?

“Well, we actu­al­ly did peti­tion the league to see if we could get right to it and just get 3–1 down and save every­body a lot of time and catch up to the East­ern Con­fer­ence,” Mal­one cracked. “But that was shot down.”

Two days after cel­e­brat­ing his 49th birth­day with one of the biggest vic­to­ries in Nuggets his­to­ry, Mal­one was loose and joc­u­lar with media ear­ly Thurs­day after­noon. But he also grasps James inti­mate­ly from his tenure as an assis­tant coach in Cleve­land from 2005-10. And grasps full well that if the third-seed­ed Nuggets act like they were thrilled just to be invit­ed to the prom, King James is going to dance them straight out of the gym.

“That’s going to be our great­est chal­lenge (Fri­day),” Mal­one said. “Can we match their inten­si­ty? And I thought in Game 1 against the Clip­pers, we did for a quar­ter-and-a-half, (we) just did not sus­tain it. I think we were just gassed. And I think, hope­ful­ly, we’re able to put forth a 48-minute effort.”