With Oklahoma City guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander fixing to get his hands on the NBA championship trophy, the Nuggets can’t get a handle on hiring a general manager.

This is what’s known in the basketball biz as a competitive disadvantage.

Or freakin’ ridiculous.

Take your pick.

With a not-so-subtle nudge from his father, Josh Kroenke shocked the NBA world in the waning days of the regular season by firing coach Michael Malone and kissing general manager Calvin Booth goodbye.

That bombshell landed April 8.

More than two months later, the rest of the league is in high gear with preparation for the draft on June 25 and the wooing of free agents less than a week later.

The Nuggets?

They’re twiddling thumbs.

Interim general manager Ben Tenzer would’ve been the quick, easy and inexpensive hire. But if he’s been in that role for more than 70 days and hasn’t landed the gig, then what’s all the lollygagging about?

So I’ve patiently waited for another bombshell, hopeful for news that Kroenke Sports & Entertainment will break from its old way of doing business and spend big on the new general manager that the best basketball player in the world deserves.

But I’ve got to admit: Holding my breath has started to be hazardous to my health.

Since Stan Kroenke started building a Denver sports empire 25 years ago, he has always spent generously between the lines.

That’s why Nuggets ownership happily paid every penny of Nikola Jokic’s $51.4 million salary last season, and it might also be a contributing factor to why the team was guilty of shelling out more money than Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. are worth.

But since 2000, executives on both the sports and business side of the KSE operation have regularly complained to me that the Kroenkes are stubbornly thrifty with anyone who doesn’t personally put points on the scoreboard.

So we all should be shocked if current ESPN talking head Bob Myers, who did a masterful job of free-spending to build the Golden State Warriors dynasty, walks through the doors of Ball Arena as the new president of basketball operations.

Me? Well, neither Stan nor Josh have called to ask for my advice, but I would be more interested in luring Chad Buchanan, who serves as first lieutenant to Pacers prez of basketball ops Kevin Pritchard, away from Indiana with a promotion to run the whole show in Denver.

Check out his resume, which has included NBA stops in Portland and Indiana, where Buchanan now serves as general manager, and this dude has had a hand in trades that landed the Blazers a draft pick that became Damian Lillard and made Indy a legit contender when they acquired Pascal Siakam from Toronto.

Yes, I know. The Kroenkes haven’t been in any hurry to fill the GM vacancy, according to one reasonable theory, because the Nuggets don’t have a pick in the upcoming draft.

But that brings me to an entirely different theory of why it’s taking so long to hire a general manager, at any price.

Despite the presence of Jokic, who’s squarely in his MVP prime, maybe being the general manager of the Nuggets isn’t a job that is all it’s cracked up to be.

While the cupboard isn’t entirely bare, the Nuggets ranked 29th of 30 NBA teams in ESPN’s recent rankings of future draft assets.

Masai Ujiri, who went on to win a championship in Toronto, and Tim Connelly, who took the money and ran off to Minnesota before getting his championship pay-off in Colorado, both walked away from the Kroenkes.

Under the new salary-cap rules, fraught with pitfalls of the luxury tax, second-aprons and restrictive roster moves, the Nuggets are hamstrung with an overpaid and overrated starting five.

And then there’s a sticky, slow chain of command.

While he used to bristle about any suggestion of Pops paying his allowance, Josh Kroenke now makes it clear that in his role as KSE vice chairman, he serves as team liaison and middle man to the owner and governor.

The buck stops with Stan Kroenke.

At age 77, he still runs the Nuggets from afar.

Whoever takes the gig of general manager will have to work in the big, demanding shadow of Big Stan.

And that ain’t easy.