Somebody give the Nuggets a hug. They lost an ugly NBA playoff game only a mother could love.

“A real disgusting basketball game,” interim coach David Adelman said Sunday.

Amen, brother.

With a chance to seize control of this best-seven-series, the Nuggets’ hearts were willing, but tired legs and brain fatigue failed them in a 92-87 loss to Oklahoma City.

They mucked it all up on Mother’s Day.

While it might be tempting to blame the league office for forcing Denver and Oklahoma City to take the court a little less than 39 hours after needing overtime to finish Game 3, that would also qualify as the pathetic whining of a loser. The Thunder found a way to win ugly.

As the Nuggets hit the road with the series tied at two victories apiece, know what should haunt them?

Five seconds of stupidity cost Denver its last, best chance to win a Game 4 in which both teams shot as atrociously as 10 out-of-shape dudes huffing and puffing up and down the floor at your local YMCA.

With the outcome very much in doubt and the Nuggets coming out of timeout while trailing 81-78 in the fourth quarter, they were unable to get the ball inbounds within the allotted five seconds.

“That,” Denver center Nikola Jokic said, “cannot happen.”

In an arena packed with 19,995 spectators, the Nuggets committed a brain fart.

Who’s going to own it?

With the time-tested theory that any playoff game, and even an entire postseason series, can turn on the smallest detail, here’s the anatomy of an epic fail:

Let’s start with Nuggets guard Christian Braun, who ran the baseline after deciding against trusting Michael Porter Jr and his ailing left shoulder to catch the basketball with OKC defender Jalen Williams draped on him.

And with Thunder guard Alex Caruso strongly denying Jamal Murray as a second option, Braun waited too, until after officials had whistled the inbounds violation, before he got rid of the hot potato.

“It’s my fault,” said Braun, who blamed himself for initiating the inbounds play before teammates could get properly positioned. “Got to be better, it’s a big point in the game.”

More intense blame, however, must fall at the feet of Adelman. He has done an amazing job reigniting the team’s fighting spirit and tweaking schemes (see: regular use of zone defense), since moving into the lead bench seat vacated by Michael Malone when Nuggets ownership fired the longtime coach on April 8.

There’s a steep learning curve for any first-time head coach during his first 14 games on the job. The failure to anticipate full-court pressure by OKC coming out of a timeout was nothing more than a momentary lack of focus.

But on a big stage with the whole NBA world watching, it made Adelman look as if he forgot how to draw up an inbounds play against the press that every middle-school coach has tucked away in a spiral notebook.

“You can’t have a mental mistake like that with four and a half minutes to go. I’ll take the hit,” said Adelman, who indicated Porter neglected to flash as a passing target for Braun. “That cannot happen. That’s inexcusable. People will say, ‘That’s a tired mistake.’ That’s not. That’s an execution mistake. And that’s on me.”

After the miscue, Adelman was forced to watch Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander cash the costly Denver turnover with a turnaround jumper that staked OKC to a five-point lead the visitors never relinquished down the stretch.

But in the grand scheme, the buck stops with team president Josh Kroenke, who took the gamble of firing Malone, who led the Nuggets to a championship less than two years ago, with the playoff opener less than two weeks away.

That was an act of pure desperation. Crisis-solving by shock therapy.

The playoffs are no place for on-the-job training. As OKC coach Mark Daignault noted earlier in this series, the limited trial Adelman has been granted is insufficient time for any coach to make major changes in offensive approach, substitution patterns or anything of substance.

With the Nuggets looking for a new general manager to fix the roster’s obvious flaws, it would be bassackwards to give Adelman the permanent coaching gig based on surviving a seven-game series against the Los Angeles Clippers.

When league and television muckety-mucks decided it would be a brilliant idea schedule a season-on-the-brink game for the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed in the Nuggets house at 1:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, the short rest made some of the most talented athletes on the planet look like rank amateurs.

The league got the ugly mess it deserved. To borrow the name of OKC’s entertainment district, Game 4 was: Bricktown!

The Nuggets managed only eight points in the opening quarter, and they would go on to clank 22 of their first 24 shot attempts. After rallying to take a 71-63 lead when Peyton Watson made the first basket of the fourth quarter, Denver simply ran out of gas. The Thunder won despite atrocious 35.8 percent marksmanship from the field.

Jokic, a weary man who needed 22 shots to score 27 points, refused to use the lack of rest as an excuse.

“When I play the game,” Jokic said, “I do not think about that.”

The Thunder’s bench carried Oklahoma City through to victory, by not only outscoring Denver subs 35-8, but also playing 86 minutes, while Adelman could only trust his reserves with 40 minutes on the floor.

It was another coaching decision Adelman will second-guess himself on.

“When you lose a game, you think of everything right away,” Adelman said. “Obviously, we were very tired, as they were … We’ve rode our guys throughout the season. For good reason, it’s an amazing starting five. But I’ve got to try to be as creative as I can be, to help them have some legs late in the game.”

Denver could’ve, would’ve, should’ve pinned OKC’s backs to the window, to the wall with a 3-1 series advantage.

Instead, the Nuggets must hit the road, while running on empty.