Niko­la Jokic did his best Michael Porter Jr. impres­sion so that both could final­ly rest.

Jokic was aver­ag­ing 39.2 min­utes, almost five more per game than his pre­vi­ous sea­son aver­age. Porter was aver­ag­ing 37.8 min­utes, six more than his. They’ve been Denver’s two work­hors­es on a depth-deprived ros­ter. With Jamal Mur­ray in con­cus­sion pro­to­col for the sec­ond leg of a back-to-back Sat­ur­day night, the onus was on them even more.

The Nuggets only led 81–68 with five min­utes remain­ing in the third quar­ter against a win­less Utah Jazz team — not enough of a cush­ion for the starters to clock out ear­ly. Then in a mat­ter of three min­utes, Jokic buried three 3‑pointers from three dif­fer­ent loca­tions: the top of the key, the wing and the corner.

“That was love­ly,” Porter said, smil­ing, after watch­ing the entire fourth quar­ter of Denver’s 129–103 win from the bench.

The Nuggets have been round­ly scru­ti­nized, inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly, for their 3‑point shoot­ing options ear­ly in the new sea­son. Jokic him­self declared them “not a good shoot­ing team” after just one game, a 7‑for-39 per­for­mance on open­ing day at Ball Are­na. He labeled Porter and Mur­ray as the only two con­sis­tent­ly reli­able threats from deep. Both had an inef­fi­cient first weekend.

“If those cou­ple of games at the begin­ning came in Jan­u­ary, I don’t think any­one would have been too alarmed,” Porter said Sat­ur­day at Ball Are­na. “So I didn’t real­ly care.”

The Nuggets’ 3‑point weapon­ry hasn’t been as dire as it seemed that night against the Thun­der when their vol­ume of attempts was high but their effi­cien­cy was atro­cious. Since then, the team’s num­bers have unfold­ed more accord­ing­ly with its past trend: low vol­ume, high effi­cien­cy. Den­ver is 43.2% from out­side exclud­ing the open­er, but on just 29.2 attempts in those five games. Over­all, the Nuggets rank sec­ond-to-last in attempts ahead of the Lakers.

“With our per­son­nel, I think I should be aim­ing to get six to eight, some­times nine 3s up,” Porter said Sat­ur­day. “I think Jamal will have to take a few more. I think Niko­la being will­ing to just let it fly some­times will be big for us. And then Julian shoot­ing off the bench. Just because teams are shoot­ing more and more 3s, we’ve got­ta try to shoot more, I think.”

Porter’s sea­son clip is only 37.5% so far, but he’s 50% since the Nuggets left Den­ver for their first road trip. His aver­age attempts are at 6.7, firm­ly with­in the range of his stat­ed goal.

But Jokic has iron­i­cal­ly been the main perime­ter rev­e­la­tion since his open­ing-night com­ment. He is 16 for 27 on the sea­son (59.3%), a stat that elicit­ed a “real­ly?” from Porter. The Nuggets even tried an after-time­out play call in Toron­to that was designed to get Jokic an open 3‑point look — a clear reac­tion to his career-high sev­en 3s the pre­vi­ous game.

His bar­rage late in the third quar­ter Sat­ur­day was essen­tial beyond the box score. After four con­sec­u­tive games that came down to the final minute and two that required over­time, Denver’s start­ing line­up needs every breather it can get. Jokic saved him­self, Porter and Aaron Gor­don at least five or six extra min­utes of play­ing time. He accom­plished it by bury­ing jumpers every­where, in every way: spot­ting up or pulling up.

“You’ve got­ta think, it’s not a 6‑foot‑3 guy clos­ing out on him either,” Julian Strawther said. “It’s a 7‑footer with a 7–5 wingspan every time. That’s just who (Jokic) is. Every­body in the world knows how amaz­ing he is, and he still finds a way to shock every­body every night.”

Strawther is not as con­cerned with the team’s over­all vol­ume. In fact, the 22-year-old has been inten­tion­al about not over­do­ing it ear­ly in the sea­son despite hav­ing been the sec­ond unit’s only effi­cient scor­er (47.1% from three after a 3‑for‑6 night against Utah).

“I feel like there’s also just a bal­ance for myself, just try­ing to find the right shots and not force any­thing. I could eas­i­ly go out there and get up sev­en, eight, nine 3s a night,” Strawther said. “And they’d prob­a­bly be a bunch of ill-advised shots. And I thought that’s some­thing I did even my rook­ie year: Take a bunch of ill-advised shots. Like I keep telling y’all, my main point of empha­sis is just to con­tin­ue to stay effi­cient. And just be a guy that is known for stay­ing effi­cient. … Our vol­ume isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing that we’re just gonna go out there and chuck a bunch of shots.”

Jokic’s out­landish effi­cien­cy is cer­tain to regress even if he stays rel­a­tive­ly hot. Any 60% clip is nat­u­ral­ly an anom­aly — in the same way the Nuggets’ sea­son-open­ing stat line seemed to be one big anom­aly. Still, it’s encour­ag­ing that Den­ver has four 3‑point shoot­ers exceed­ing 40%, and even more so that none of them are Porter or Murray.

Chris­t­ian Braun has improved to 42.1% on low attempts. And Gor­don is pun­ish­ing scout­ing reports for dar­ing him to chuck. He torched Min­neso­ta for 31 points Fri­day, help­ing him to a 55% sea­son clip beyond the arc.

The pow­er for­ward doesn’t even have a spe­cif­ic num­ber of reps or makes that he aims for when he begins a shoot­ing work­out. “I just shoot way too much,” he told The Post this week. “It’s just how­ev­er I’m feeling.”

That seems to be the Nuggets’ gen­er­al approach to their num­ber of attempts any giv­en game. In Toron­to, they end­ed up tak­ing only 20 en route to a win. In Min­neso­ta, they crushed the Tim­ber­wolves in the paint ear­ly in the game, but it didn’t mat­ter because the Wolves kept up entire­ly from 3‑point range.

“I don’t think we can get that num­ber (of attempts) up,” Michael Mal­one acknowl­edged. But the 10th-year coach has also been well aware of oppo­nents sag­ging off sev­er­al of his perime­ter players.

“Get­ting more makes,” Mal­one said, “is more of a pri­or­i­ty for me.”