Joe Abunas­sar doesn’t want to get your hopes up. He also digs Zeke Nna­ji too much to drop a baby grand onto the kid’s shoul­ders. Or set expec­ta­tions that the Nuggets’ first-round draft pick is going to have to lug around for the next 15 years like a dead weight.

“One of the gen­er­al man­agers came in and talked about him,” offered Abunas­sar, the founder of Impact Bas­ket­ball and star train­er to the NBA elite. “And (the GM) said, ‘The worst he can be,’ although he didn’t say it that way, ‘is, OK, Chan­ning Frye.’ Who had a great career.”

Abunas­sar knows careers. And stars.

His ros­ter of alum­ni clien­tele includes Chauncey Billups, Kevin Gar­nett, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh and Paul Pierce. He took Nna­ji under his wing in Las Vegas for rough­ly five months and change ear­li­er this year, help­ing the teen put on 15 pounds of mus­cle — on a veg­an diet, no less — while shav­ing the rough edges off of foot­work and shoot­ing form.

“Look, I trained KG,” Abunas­sar said. “At 19 years old, he has the tools. I believe (Nna­ji) is going to be a long-time starter in this league. And I think what makes him real­ly great for Den­ver is that he can play for Den­ver right now — guard­ing, rebound­ing and tak­ing shots.”

It’s the for­mer that wor­ries you. Espe­cial­ly giv­en that the Nuggets no longer have the ser­vices of two of their best and most ver­sa­tile wing defend­ers, Jera­mi Grant and Tor­rey Craig — rangy types who could guard the two through four spots on the floor, and even small­er fives, if push came to shove.

“I told him (last week), ‘There are two guys on the Den­ver team with the names of (Niko­la) Jokic and (Jamal) Mur­ray who shoot a lot of bas­ket­balls,’” Abunas­sar laughed. “‘You’re not there to lead the team in scor­ing, broth­er. You get to guard big men and you get to guard (small forwards).’

“That’s what’s great about Zeke, is that he can guard mul­ti­ple posi­tions. While that offen­sive (side) is some­thing he’ll grow into, absolutely.”

“Go go against the best”

Zeke Nna­ji doesn’t want to get your hopes up. But when Tim Con­nel­ly, the Nuggets’ pres­i­dent of bas­ket­ball oper­a­tions, and Calvin Booth, the team’s GM, sketched out their mas­ter plan for his role, the dude couldn’t stop grinning.

“They said they real­ly want me to be able to guard threes through fives, and I think I’ll be able to do that,” the 6‑foot-11 for­ward told The Post last week.

“My ulti­mate goal is to be able to guard one through five con­sis­tent­ly. I want to be a lock­down defend­er no mat­ter who I’m guard­ing. But the biggest thing right now is work­ing on that three through five and just being ver­sa­tile, no mat­ter what role I’m playing.”

It’s not fair to expect a 19-year-old to walk in here, as a rook­ie, and keep every­body from Dono­van Mitchell to Antho­ny Davis in check, let alone in front of them. But Nna­ji also knows the A‑list assign­ments — even­tu­al­ly — are part of the job descrip­tion, whether he likes it not. Espe­cial­ly in a West­ern Con­fer­ence stacked with stars.

“Oh, yeah, we talked about (big names) a lit­tle bit,” the reign­ing Pac-12 Fresh­man of the Year said. “But I feel like I’m not some­one who shies away from the best. I feel like I want to go against the best and try to out­play them. And beat them.

“I think that’s real­ly just my com­pet­i­tive side. I don’t like to lose. I want to win and dom­i­nate everything.”

The Twin Cities native has been tak­ing care­ful notes when it comes to the Nuggets’ recent ros­ter makeover, too. Nna­ji is eager to prove he’s wor­thy of that trust — that defen­sive trust, espe­cial­ly — soon­er rather than later.

“I’ve been prepar­ing for this my whole life,” Nna­ji said. “If I have to guard the oth­er team’s best play­er, you know what? I’m going to do that. And I’m going to do it to the best of my abil­i­ty. I’m going to be work­ing on that at prac­tice a lot, doing what­ev­er I can do to improve, so I can be that lock­down defender.”

“No one’s going to outwork him”

Jere­my Miller doesn’t want to get your hopes up. But Miller, Nnaji’s AAU coach at D1 Min­neso­ta, thinks you’ll be sur­prised at the dude’s han­dles. And that the bulk of the Nuggets lock­er room, griz­zled play­off vet­er­ans now, are going to fall head over heels for the new guy.

“No one’s going to out­work him,” Miller said. “The vet­er­ans on (the Nuggets) are going to love him because he’s going to be a guy that’s not caught up in all the glitz and glamor.

“He’s very ground­ed. They’re going to be hap­py that this 19-year-old is going to work as hard as them. He’s not a hey-look-at-me kid. His par­ents are phe­nom­e­nal peo­ple and they just real­ly ground­ed him … he was raised as a renais­sance man, in a lot of ways. He just has real­ly high character.”

Nna­ji was raised in a home of musi­cians, ath­letes and dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ans. He didn’t have a cel­lu­lar phone until his junior year of high school. His hap­py place off the court isn’t scrolling through Insta­gram or Tik­Tok. It’s com­pos­ing songs on the key­board, learn­ing new instru­ments, and expand­ing on a Spo­ti­fy library that bounces from Ray Charles to Cold­play, Ste­vie Won­der to Frank Sina­tra, Fleet­wood Mac to Bob Marley.

“The two instru­ments I’m learn­ing right now are har­mon­i­ca and Span­ish gui­tar,” said Nna­ji, a mul­ti-sport, mul­ti-instru­men­tal prodi­gy who’s been play­ing the piano since he was in first grade.

“There’s this one song, ‘Piano Man’ by Bil­ly Joel — I (want to) play the har­mon­i­ca and piano at the same time, so I’ve got a lit­tle neck brace that goes around me.”

Miller plays you a mem­o­ry, this one from Indi­anapo­lis a few years back. Nna­ji was play­ing behind for­ward Matthew Hurt at D1, who would even­tu­al­ly sign with Duke. But it didn’t take long for him to start turn­ing heads as a Euro-style big with reach and range, a hid­den gem who just need­ed to bulk up.

“Bri­an Snow, an ana­lyst at 247Sports, he came to watch us and was like, ‘You didn’t tell me you had anoth­er pro on your team,’” Miller recalled with a chuckle.

“We tell our big guys to push it. We tell them to shoot 3s. We tell them to step out of that tra­di­tion­al big guy role. And (Nna­ji) just blos­somed play­ing with oth­er real­ly high-lev­el players.”

“A physical specimen”

We don’t want to get your hopes up. But if the floor is Frye, the Nuggets could be star­ing at a poten­tial skyscraper.

After all, the pro com­pared to Nna­ji made the NBA first-team All-Rook­ie squad as a cen­ter with the Knicks back in 2006. Frye was a dou­ble-dig­it scor­er, on aver­age, five times over his first eight sea­sons. And an even­tu­al NBA cham­pi­on, at age 33, as a role guy with LeBron’s Cavs.

If that’s the floor … what’s the ceil­ing?

“The ceil­ing is very high,” said Abunas­sar, who worked Zeke out five-and-a-half days a week, five to six hours per day, hav­ing him shoot from every con­ceiv­able angle.

“The one thing you can­not teach, and I’ve been doing this for 25 years, is his ath­leti­cism. We did a good job expand­ing upon it. But this kid is a phys­i­cal specimen.”