Pain.

“(Expletive) being up 20. The season’s over,” Michael Malone snapped late Sunday night after the Nuggets blew a 20-point lead in a 98-90 loss to the Timberwolves in Game 7 at Ball Arena.

Shock.

“I feel like we should have won,” Jamal Murray said between deep sighs. “That’s the hard part.”

Reality.

“Everybody wants to beat us, probably,” Nikola Jokic offered.

There will be no NBA championship repeat for the Nuggets. Joker will not “stay on parade,” as he did last year at the peak of Nuggets fandom, exorcising decades of demons. A celebrated starting five has likely played its final game together.

Don’t blame the Wolves. Credit the Wolves.

“The better team won,” as Malone said.

Minnesota didn’t luck into its first trip to the Western Conference finals since 2004. The T-Wolves earned a spot opposite the Mavericks by toeing up the champs, not backing down and stunning a Nuggets crowd into submission.

What was the mood inside a Nuggets locker room that tied a team record with 57 wins with designs on becoming the first repeat champion since the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors?

Pain, shock and the reality that the second title is going be a lot tougher to win than the first.

“It’s back to being the hunter,” Murray said.

Minnesota was no joke and no fluke. The T-Wolves blasted the Nuggets by 45 points in Game 6 and won the series by winning three games at Ball Arena, where the Nuggets had gone 33-8 during the regular season.

“That’s certainly not something we’re accustomed to,” Malone said.

The Wolves treated a 20-point deficit as if it were a challenge, not a burden. With 10:50 left in the third quarter, Murray swished a 3-pointer that pushed the Nuggets into a 58-38 lead.

Ball Arena could smell another trip to the conference finals. The rest of the game stunk.

There will be no second championship if general manager Calvin Booth and the Nuggets brain trust can’t find more help for Jokic and Murray, who combined for 69 of the 90 points.

Such is life with three max contacts on the roster. There’s not much money left to fill in the holes.

The Nuggets of next season will look different. Jokic and Murray have a long offseason representing their home countries in the Olympics, shortening another Summer of Jokic. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the fifth starter, has a player option and could cash in elsewhere.

“It’s a little worrisome. He’s a valuable player,” Booth told me. “I’m sure he has a lot of options. I know he’s enjoyed playing with his teammates. But he’s going to have a lot of suitors. We’ll have to see if we can compete with the market.”

Malone suggested the Nuggets were tired at the end. On their way to the 2023 NBA title, the Nuggets ran away with the No. 1 seed, resting Jokic and Murray to close the regular season.

There was no rest in 2024. The West got better and caught up to and passed the Nuggets.

For the sixth straight season, the NBA’s reigning champ failed to reach the conference finals. The crown is made heavier with contract demands.

Former Nuggets general manager Tim Connelly built a roster in Minnesota that was custom-made to slow Jokic — and his master plan came to fruition in this series. Twin towers Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns harassed Jokic on every touch. Third tower Naz Reid filled in the gaps. Toss in Anthony Edwards, the NBA’s next big thing, and Denver was dethroned.

“I think they’re built to beat us,” Jokic said.

The Jokic era has accomplished the impossible here, his No. 15 jersey as popular these days as No. 7 Elways from back in the day. Joker has produced nine playoff series wins, one shy of the franchise’s total from the previous 40 years.

Blowing a 20-point lead at home? Joker’s teams don’t lose like that. Until they did.

“It’s hard because the teams are more hungry,” Jokic said.

The Nuggets professed they will be back for another championship run.

“I consider the San Antonio Spurs to be a dynasty,” Malone said. “And they never won back-to-back (titles).”

But for a night, at least, Nuggets heartbreak returned to LoDo. For a night, the ’23 title run felt like a blip — with Sunday’s collapse the return of Nuggets reality.

It’s tougher here.

The biggest playoff collapse in team history brought back too many memories of Nuggets pain from before — drafting Raef Lafrentz over Dirk Nowitzki and Vince Carter, Anthony Carter’s in-bounds passes to the Lakers, Murray’s knee injury just weeks after the trade for Aaron Gordon.

There is no pain like Nuggets pain.

“Right now, all I’m thinking about is we’re done,” Malone said.

(Expletive) being up 20, he said.

The season’s over, and a Game 7 collapse like that is going to sting.