The whopping $341 million that the Nuggets committed to spend on Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray won’t mean a thing unless they can help Nikola Jokic get another ring.

Scant hours before tipoff of this highly anticipated basketball season, Denver cemented its Core Four by making a massive investment in the rock-steady Gordon, doubling down on the big bet management made in September on the mercurial and often-injured Murray.

It seems the death of the NBA super team, rumored to be going the way of the dinosaur, was greatly exaggerated.

With Jokic, Gordon, Murray and Michael Porter Jr. now bound to our dusty old cowtown through 2027, the Nuggets aren’t messing around. Kudos to Stan and Josh Kroenke for pushing their chips to the middle of the table.

And in return, members of the Core Four know what they’re expected to be.

“Title contenders,” Gordon said Wednesday.

While the ever-faithful fans of Nuggets Nation will forever be grateful for the first championship in franchise history, the legacy of Jokic and his teammates will depend on if they can go back and do it again.

“Would you rather be Steve Kerr or Steve Nash? A guy who won multiple championships or multiple MVPs,” said coach Michael Malone, posing a juicy question worth pondering.

In 18 NBA seasons from 1996-2014, Nash was twice named the league’s most valuable player and recorded more career assists than Magic Johnson. This proudly Canadian point guard has a place of honor in the Naismith Hall of Fame. But Nash doesn’t own a championship ring.

As a point guard in the league from 1988-2003, Kerr often worked in the shadow of Michael Jordan, but won five championships as a player. As a coach, he has won four more with the Golden State Warriors and guided Team USA to gold at the Paris Olympics.

Since Malone asked, I will say: Nash is among my favorite players of all time, but I’d rather have the career of Kerr.

“At the end of the day, you have your career earnings and your career stats,” Malone said, “but what truly separates people is championships.”

The Nuggets were top-heavy and loaded with expensive talent even before team management rewarded Murray and Gordon with contract extensions.

At a time when Oklahoma City has become the new “it” team in the Western Conference and national pundits have begun to wonder if maybe that championship banner raised in 2023 will make Joker and his back-up band a one-hit wonder, here are the current salaries of the Core Four.

Jokic: $51.4 million

Murray: $36 million

MPJ: $35.8 million

Gordon: $22.8 million

Even by the Monopoly money standards of NBA economic madness, that’s a big stack of Benjamins.

But as super heroic as the Core Four can be, they can’t win a championship without help. The supporting cast wasn’t good enough when Denver got bounced last spring by Minnesota during the second round of the playoffs.

So the real test for Malone this season will be his willingness to be patient with the development of Christian Braun, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson. With none of them born before 2001, they are the U-23 Kiddie Corps behind the Core Four.

Can Malone stomach giving Braun, Strawther and Watson more expansive roles, even at the cost of regular-season losses for the Nuggets that could bump them outside the top four places in the standings of the wild, wild West?

“If you look at the history of our game, when you try to develop three (or) four young players, to do that and win at a very high level is often very hard at the same time,” Malone said.

He has seen tangible evidence to believe in the ability of Braun to step into the starting lineup, the potential in Strawther to knock down three-point shots and the skills of Watson to be a defensive stopper.

“With young guys, you go through some growing pains,” Malone said.

“The bottom line is: Christian, Peyton, Julian … They have to be good for us this year. Whether they are young or not, we’ve got to move past young. They have to be good for us, if we’re going to be a dangerous team.”

Should the Nuggets fall short during the next three seasons and fail to win more than a single championship with Jokic, it will be a crying shame. Fair or not, you can bet the first person to get the blame will be Malone.

“We want to be remembered as a team that won not just one championship, but multiple championships,” Malone said.

Malone is now 53 years old, with gray in his beard. But back in the day, he was a point guard.

So I asked the Nuggets coach: Who would you rather be? Nash or Kerr?

“I’m gonna,” replied Malone, as he bolted from the team’s practice court to the locker room, “go with Steve.”