Reg­gie Miller’s head says the NBA’s West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals are LeBron’s to lose.

But his heart? Man, after ing the Nuggets for the last three weeks, his heart’s about a mile high right now.

“The Lak­ers are the clear-cut favorite, because they’re the Lak­ers and they’ve got the best play­er of their gen­er­a­tion in LeBron (James),” Miller, the for­mer NBA star and cur­rent Turn­er Sports ana­lyst, said on a media con­fer­ence call Wednes­day. “But something’s brew­ing. Something’s a‑brewing.”

The Nuggets, who made NBA his­to­ry Tues­day night by knock­ing the sec­ond-seed­ed Los Ange­les Clip­pers out of the post­sea­son, notch­ing their sec­ond straight series vic­to­ry after being down 3–1, are cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tion of bas­ket­ball fans all over the world. That they’re the biggest under­dogs still swing­ing inside the NBA’s Dis­ney World bub­ble has only made them more love­able. Espe­cial­ly for life­time bas­ket­ball wonks who are still pulling lit­tle pieces of crow out of their mouths after what the Nuggets did to Kawhi Leonard, Paul George & Co.

“Something’s def­i­nite­ly brew­ing,” quipped Chris Web­ber, the ex-NBA pow­er for­ward and Miller’s fel­low talk­ing head at Turn­er Sports. “Put it like this: I like Den­ver as much as I would like any­one else’s chances against the Lak­ers, after what they’ve shown.”

The Nuggets, who’ll take on the top-seed­ed Lake Show for a sev­en-game series start­ing Fri­day night, dropped three of their four reg­u­lar-sea­son meet­ings with Los Ange­les dur­ing the start-stop-start-again reg­u­lar sea­son. Den­ver has nev­er knocked the Lak­ers from the NBA Play­offs in six post­sea­son series, all-time, and the odd­s­mak­ers know it: Fan­Du­el on Wednes­day gave Los Ange­les an 88.2% chance of advanc­ing to the NBA Finals, while putting the odds of the Nuggets pulling out anoth­er stun­ning, sev­en-game series vic­to­ry at 13-to‑1.

“I will say this: If (Clip­pers) Game 5 and (Clip­pers) Game 7 Paul Mill­sap shows up, then all bets are off,” Miller said. “Because he was fab­u­lous at both ends of the floor (in those games) … if he plays any­where near that con­sis­tent­ly in this series, the Nuggets are a dif­fer­ent team.”

Mill­sap only net­ted three boards and six points in Game 7, but the lat­ter came on two sec­ond-half 3‑pointers to help the 3 seed pull away again late. The 35-year-old for­ward reg­is­tered a +19 in plus/minus over his 32 min­utes of action, help­ing the Nuggets hold the Clips to 37.8% shoot­ing from the floor.

The Den­ver vet­er­an dropped 17 points on the Clip­pers in Game 5, 14 of them com­ing dur­ing a mas­sive third-quar­ter surge. Millsap’s 17 points were the most he’d put up up since Aug. 3.

“I think he’s rein­vent­ed him­self,” Web­ber said of Mill­sap, who’s aver­aged 8.4 points and 4.1 boards while con­nect­ing on 37.5% of his 3‑point tries this post­sea­son. “I love the fact he’s con­sis­tent, love the con­sis­ten­cy that he brings. You can trust him.”

Web­ber trusts the Nuggets bench, too, a line of depth and defense that goes nine or 10 play­ers deep, with or with­out rehab­bing swing man Will Bar­ton. He said it reminds him of his 2001-02 Sacra­men­to squad that tus­sled with the Shaq-and-Kobe-Era Lak­ers in the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals. Those Kings had a 3–2 series lead on Los Ange­les before drop­ping Games 6 and 7 to the even­tu­al NBA champs.

“It’s not fore­gone the Lak­ers are going to win this,” Miller stressed. “I know every­one is dis­ap­point­ed, and I am, that we won’t see the bat­tle of L.A. But don’t go to sleep on the Den­ver Nuggets. Don’t. Do not do it.”