DENVER — If you don’t believe in sports curses, allow me to introduce you to the Denver Nuggets.

Nuggets bobbleheads are voodoo dolls.

This is all so Nuggets right now. The promise, then the pain. The awesomeness, then the awfulness. The juggernaut starting 5 … then the sickening, horrible knee injury to Jamal Murray.

So Nuggets. All of it. They beat the Grizzlies 139-137 in double overtime Monday at Ball Arena, and the game was preceded by more Nuggets news, so you just know it had to be bad news: Monte Morris, the point guard in line to fill Murray’s minutes in the starting lineup, has come down with a bum hamstring.

“I don’t think he’s going to be back for a little while,” coach Michael Malone said.

When do the locusts arrive? Is that before or after the frogs?

When Nikola Jokic goes for 47 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists — as he did so effortlessly Monday — the emotions can be heavy. You’re watching the greatest Nuggets player to date. You’re also watching what could have been — with a healthy Murray as Joker’s wingman. The Nuggets are still a good team, no longer a potentially great one. Outside Jokic, they looked just OK. They looked like they need 47, 15 and eight from Jokic to beat the Grizzlies.

The Nuggets improved to 3-0 since the Murray injury, but it was clear the Nuggets are not the NBA title threat they were with Murray — not close. They had 21 turnovers through regulation and the first overtime. They had someone named Shaq — not that Shaq, but Shaq Harrison — forced to play 17 minutes. The beautiful two-man game between Murray and Nikola Jokic is now a one-man game. An incredible one-man game, but a one-man game.

“Nikola rises to the occasion,” Malone said after.

Nuggets history is chock full of what-fs. Now the what-ifs of Antonio McDyess and Danilo Gallinari have company. The new chapter is, “What if Jamal Murray doesn’t get hurt in 2021?”

For posterity’s sake, here’s the correct answer to that what-if: the Nuggets could have won it all.

Not a doubt in my mind.

But not without Murray. They may find some outside shooting from Michael Porter Jr. or Aaron Gordon or The Hot Hand of the Night. They may finish with a top-four seed thanks to the brilliance of Joker, the runaway favorite to win the NBA MVP award. But Murray is more than production and numbers to this Nuggets huddle. As Jokic aww-shucks his way through a season of historic proportions, Murray was the one who believes he’s better than everybody.

Come playoff time Murray was often right.

Murray’s finest strength is a competitive streak that reminds of the cutthroat greats. If his game is not on par with Kobe, Michael and Isiah, his relentless hunt for winning certainly is. The way Murray inevitably will attack his injury rehab will make a good “30-for-30” on ESPN someday.

But he was not in Malone’s starting lineup vs. the Grizzlies. He was on a private jet with Tim Connelly, the president of basketball ops, en route to California for surgery on a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Murray’s in-flight reading material was “Stumbling on Happiness” by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. According to Amazon, the book “reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future.”

It had been easy to imagine the future of Jokic and Murray will include Colorado’s NBA title. This season, even. They were 6-0 after a trade for power forward Aaron Gordon turned them into a menace on offense and defense. They were confident bordering on cocky, the good kind.

Aside from Jokic hoisting the MVP trophy, winning a playoff series is the new measure of success. If the Nuggets draw someone other than the Lakers in the first round, they are capable of advancing to the Western Conference semifinals. Where there’s a Joker, there’s a way, and the Nuggets will enter every game with the best player on the court. Good place to start.

Jokic had 47 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists against the Grizzlies. He is the MVP on a mission. A Nuggets player has received MVP votes in 11 of the past 40 seasons, or not often. Two were Jokic, two were Carmelo Anthony, six were Alex English, the rest were one-timers.

So these are still rare salad days for Nuggets fanatics. But it all makes you wonder what could have been, if the Nuggets had strayed from the time-honored script of what could go wrong will.

The Nuggets could order cotton candy and it would taste like broccoli. They would get the flu right before a three-day weekend. They’d hook a trophy trout, only it turns out to be a sucker.

On a night when MVP Jokic shined brightest, two assists shy of another dazzling triple-double, it was still a reminder of what could have been. If that’s not so Nuggets, I don’t know what is.