For all the changes around Nikola Jokic, when he’s not on the court, the Nuggets look like the same team that got Michael Malone fired as head coach.

The Nuggets insisted everything would be different this season.

It’s not. They’re living a lie.

The faces have changed.

But the song remains the same.

And Jokic knows it.

“We are not that good,” Jokic warned last week. “I think we need to be much better if we want to do something big.”

Their record is 13-5. But the Nuggets are pretenders, not contenders.

Although we are not yet 25 percent into a new NBA season, it’s already time to concede Denver won’t be challenging Oklahoma City for the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.

After losing 139-136 on Friday at home to San Antonio, which had Victor Wembanyama out with a calf injury, it very much appears that earning homecourt advantage for even a single round of the playoffs could be a hefty challenge for the Nuggets.

The line behind the Thunder is crowded with sharp elbows. The Lakers with Luka, the Rockets with K.D. and the Spurs with Wemby all look to be at least the equal of the Nuggets, if not better.

Yes, I was stoked about the fresh ideas embraced by a new leadership in Denver’s front office and the new look to the Nuggets lineup.

I was wrong.

If you want to give the pass to the Nuggets because starters Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun are currently rehabbing from injury, I get it. But Gordon, as well as Jamal Murray, both have an established and frustrating history of being beaten up by the unrelenting grind of a long NBA season.

I like coach David Adelman, who can be bluntly honest in evaluating his players without being as ornery as Malone. But like Malone before him, the Nuggets of Adelman are developing the habit of blowing victories against teams that don’t have any business beating them.

During the past two weeks alone, Denver has not only dropped games at home, but surrendered an average of 129 points in the process, to a road-weary Chicago Bulls team that had lost five in a row and a Sacramento Kings squad led by our old friend Russell Westbrook.

“When you score 136 points and lose, that’s an issue … We’ve got to grow up and compete defensively,” said Adelman, after watching the Spurs drop 80 second-half points on the Nuggets.

Run-and-gun is certainly fun.

But it’s no way to survive and advance in the playoffs.

After replacing Calvin Booth, the new front office duo of Ben Tenzer and Jonathan Wallace got busy, trading Michael Porter Jr. to New Jersey for Cam Johnson, freeing up salary-cap space that allowed the Nuggets to remake their bench with the return of Bruce Brown, as well as the additions of capable NBA veterans Jonas Valanciunas and Tim Hardaway Jr. 

Hampered by Johnson’s slow start and the injuries to Gordon and Braun, the new group has never found its rhythm.

Something more than lack of cohesion, however, seems to be amiss with the Nuggets. Adelman needs to find a way to use Valanciunas more than 12.5 minutes per game, even if it requires working him into the rotation when Jokic is on the floor. While Westbrook was Captain Chaos, without him, the reserve unit lacks a proven, natural point guard.

And like Malone before him, Adelman is reluctant to let Jokic get any significant amount of rest on the bench. Can’t say I blame him. The non-Jokic minutes remain a huge problem.

According to number-crunching by the stat gurus at the website “inpredictable”, the Nuggets enjoy an advantage of 11.0 points in net scoring margin when Jokic is on the court, but suffer a collapse of minus 15.8 when he sits. From a year ago, the disparity has only grown worse.

When the best player in the world is on the court, Denver can go toe-to-toe with Oklahoma City or any team in the NBA.

But when Joker sits down, the Nuggets look very much like a team that would need more than a little luck to make the playoffs.

These Nuggets too often remind me of the Broncos in the early years of quarterback John Elway’s NFL career.

Their teams didn’t know what to do without them.

When the Nuggets fired Malone last April, with fewer than two weeks remaining in the regular season, it was shock therapy, not a solution.

These Nuggets are Jokic’s burden to bear.

They will go only as far as he can carry them.

Same as it ever was.