Nuggets super­star Niko­la Jokic ripped through last year’s play­offs seem­ing­ly void of nerves.

His stun­ning play­off debut made a mock­ery of pres­sure despite play­ing in charged envi­ron­ments such as San Anto­nio and Port­land. Jokic “showed out,” as Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one described it Sun­day after­noon on the eve of Denver’s first-round play­off series vs. Utah.

What Jokic and fel­low first-timer Jamal Mur­ray went through last year, when they came up short in a grip­ping Game 7 loss to Port­land in the sec­ond round, won’t be what rook­ie Michael Porter Jr. expe­ri­ences in his first go-round. Porter, who on Sat­ur­day was named sec­ond-team All-Bub­ble, will have an entire­ly dif­fer­ent, and advan­ta­geous, cir­cum­stance when he makes his play­off debut Mon­day vs. the Jazz.

“I think what’s unique about this cir­cum­stance is, if I’m a young play­er mak­ing my play­off debut, you do not have to wor­ry about going on the road play­ing in a hos­tile envi­ron­ment,” Mal­one said. “You’re play­ing in an emp­ty gym with piped in fake fan noise, so I think that’s allowed a lot of play­ers to play at a high­er lev­el because there’s not that added ele­ment of, I mean Port­land was a rough crowd. You don’t have that same atmos­phere, that same feel­ing. And so I think that’s going to help a lot of young play­ers like Michael.”

Utah is noto­ri­ous for hav­ing one of the most dif­fi­cult road envi­ron­ments in the NBA but that is mit­i­gat­ed by virtue of the neu­tral “bub­ble.”

Porter has made the most of his start­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties as a result of injuries to Gary Har­ris (hip) and Will Bar­ton (knee). In sev­en games in the bub­ble, Porter aver­aged 22 points on 55% shoot­ing from the field, includ­ing 42% from 3‑point range. He’s also been the Nuggets’  lead­ing rebound­er at 8.6 boards per game. A month ago, assum­ing Den­ver had a clean bill of health, it wasn’t even clear how much Mal­one would uti­lize the 6‑foot-10 stretch for­ward in the play­offs. Now he’s an invalu­able component.

“Me per­son­al­ly, I’m not real­ly look­ing at spe­cif­ic sta­tis­tics, but I know I have to be a big part of this team if we’re going to go far, like we plan on doing,” Porter said. “I’ve got big shoes I got to fill. Thrill and Gary aren’t play­ing right now, and so for me, I know I got to be a big part of it, so I got­ta come in every game locked in, be active on the glass, be active defen­sive­ly, put the ball in the hoop and be a leader out on the floor even though I’m a young guy.”

Mal­one bought Porter a lit­tle bit of cov­er since when Jokic and Mur­ray made their respec­tive play­off debuts, both had sev­er­al years of NBA expe­ri­ence under their belts. As tough as it is to believe, Porter is still a rookie.

“Michael’s a dif­fer­ent cat, he doesn’t get too high, doesn’t get too low,” Mal­one said laud­ing his young star. “He goes out there, he just wants to play, he wants to hoop. The guy is a gym rat.”

Even more encour­ag­ing, Porter was unim­pressed by the news that he’d been named to the sec­ond team All-NBA bub­ble on Sat­ur­day. Also on that list were stars like pre­sump­tive MVP Gian­nis Ante­tok­oun­m­po and Kawhi Leonard.

“For me, it all starts now,” Porter said. “So that’s a cool lit­tle achieve­ment for those first eight games, but all the real stuff that I’m focused on starts now, and that’s the playoffs.”

Porter said he feels great phys­i­cal­ly and he sounds as if he’s in a good head­space even if he’s nev­er had play­off experience.

“The ener­gy lev­el, the enthu­si­asm, the way the guys were play­ing was a whole oth­er lev­el than in the reg­u­lar sea­son, so I got to wit­ness that (last year),” he said. “Obvi­ous­ly, it’ll be dif­fer­ent play­ing, but even though we’re in the bub­ble, we all know that the inten­si­ty is going to go up times 10.”