There’s no hid­ing inside the Orlan­do bubble.

Oppo­nents are with­in close prox­im­i­ty, and it’s more like­ly than not that they’ll cross paths inside Disney’s resort.

As luck has it, Utah’s meal room is near where the Nuggets dine. When the two teams spot­ted each oth­er Fri­day, Nuggets super­star Niko­la Jokic made an astute point. These would prob­a­bly be the last pleas­antries both par­ties exchanged for the next week and a half.

So be it. The play­offs are here. Den­ver is work­ing to address its leaky 3‑point defense and to find offen­sive schemes Utah, a divi­sion rival, hasn’t seen before.

The biggest dif­fer­ence from what the Jazz saw in the reg­u­lar sea­son to the team they’ll face Mon­day in Game 1 is the emer­gence of Michael Porter Jr., who on Sat­ur­day after­noon was named to the “All-Bub­ble” sec­ond team. Utah got a sense of how Porter changes Denver’s geom­e­try after he poured in 23 points and snatched 11 rebounds in the Nuggets’ dou­ble-over­time win over the Jazz a week ago. At that point, it was Porter’s fourth con­sec­u­tive dou­ble-dou­ble in the bubble.

But as excit­ing as Porter’s uncon­scious shoot­ing has been, he’s still a rook­ie. And the grow­ing pains the Nuggets went through last year in their heart­break­ing Game 7 loss to Port­land in the sec­ond round should ben­e­fit them immense­ly this year.

“I think last year, we were all like anx­ious as far as when you us prac­tice and things like that, every­body was rush­ing things, but I think now, with that year expe­ri­ence, most of the guys that’s out there, we’re just more relaxed,” said Nuggets point guard Monte Mor­ris, whose role has increased as a result of injuries to Gary Har­ris (hip) and Will Bar­ton (knee). “I feel like it’s kin­da like tak­ing the exam a sec­ond time. You study a lit­tle better.”

Mor­ris, him­self, had a mis­er­able post­sea­son debut — one that stung through­out the reg­u­lar sea­son. Mor­ris is a far bet­ter and more con­fi­dent play­er than the one who went 0‑of-13 from 3‑point range in last year’s postseason.

“It def­i­nite­ly ate at me,” Mor­ris said. “… I’m excit­ed to get out there with that one year from last year, the few strug­gles I had play­ing out there. Now I know what to expect.”

The same goes for Jokic, the linch­pin of the Nuggets’ offense. Jokic’s pri­ma­ry take­away after his ster­ling post­sea­son debut last year was how valu­able each pos­ses­sion can be. That means no defen­sive laps­es, as have plagued the Nuggets thus far in Orlan­do, and no care­less possessions.

It’s far more encour­ag­ing for a deep play­off run that Jokic can speak from experience.

“It’s every pos­ses­sion mat­ters,” Jokic said. “You can­not have three, four times-in-a-row pos­ses­sions that you kind of drib­ble the ball or just (have) emp­ty pos­ses­sions. Or you can­not have a lot of turnovers in a row because bas­ket­ball is a game of runs, so you need to use the oppor­tu­ni­ty that you have and not kind of (start) forc­ing things.”

At the heart of Denver’s first-round matchup is a bat­tle of All-Star big men. Jokic has dom­i­nat­ed his indi­vid­ual matchup vs. Rudy Gob­ert so far this season.

“I think it’s inter­est­ing because we are kind of two dif­fer­ent type of play­ers and we are help­ing our team to win games,” Jokic said, before issu­ing a string of com­pli­ments about the reign­ing two-time Defen­sive Play­er of the Year.

Gob­ert should soak them up because from now on, the pleas­antries are over.