DENVER — Nikola Jokic needs to look at Josh Kroenke the way he looks at Jaylin Williams.

Crazy eyes. Brows in attack mode. Nostrils burning like sparklers at an Independence Day picnic. A grown man who’s not gonna take this bleep anymore.

You think the Denver Nuggets would ever sit on their hands over the summer — any summer — if the Joker went at ownership the way a black bear goes at an Arby’s dumpster?

Pay for Peyton Watson, or I walk.

Find us a backup ball-handler besides Tyus Jones, or I’m going house-hunting in Brentwood with Luka Doncic.

“My idea and desire is to stay in Denver. I’ll probably sign (an extension) next year,” Jokic told reporters in Serbian last month after a FIBA World Cup qualifier. “My desire is to play the rest of my life in Denver.”

No, no, no, dude! Angrier! Pretend Lu Dort just stole Delicious Gar! Hulk smash!

The Kroenkes got lucky about 17 different ways with Jokic, didn’t they? Especially the part about how the best-passing center in the history of the NBA also happens to be a very nice guy. Unless, of course, you stick your leg out to try and trip him.

The basketball gods will never shine on Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke and team president Josh Kroenke again the way they did with the Joker. Ever. And they know it.

You sometimes wonder if they take advantage of it, too.

The way the Nuggets botched their roster-building — the Zeke Nnaji contract and Reggie Jackson-to-Charlotte trade providing the nadir — around Jokic, most NBA icons, by now, would’ve fled our fair landlocked shores. Or kicked up enough red rocks that management started to get the hint.

But that’s not Nikola. An NBA flyover franchise in a proud, provincial, hard-working, no-frills, blue-collar town bags a proud, provincial, hard-working, no-frills, blue-collar gem in the second round of the 2014 draft. A star falls from the sky and lands in your lap while ESPN’s busy cutting away to a Taco Bell commercial. The greatest player in Nuggets history, more often than not, still acts as if he’s just happy to be rolling with the fellas. From his origin story onward, the Joker has become the super-hero movie long-suffering Front Range fans deserved.

But unless you’re Spider-Man, brother, sequels are awfully hard to pull off. We’ve entered the “Nobody Repeats!” phase of 21st-century NBA history, with eight different franchises — including Denver in 2023 — winning league titles over the last eight seasons.

It’s as if the Nuggets, like Icarus, flew too close to the sun, and the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement has spent the last two years melting the wax on their wings.

They’re the only franchise over the NBA salary tax’s second apron. They’re in a staring contest with Watson, a restricted free agent, that could last until September. Three-point specialist Tim Hardaway Jr. bolted for Miami and backup center Jonas Valanciunas went back to Europe.

Unless the Kroenkes are willing to eat some serious tax money, the franchise is probably going to have to try to trade — and without much leverage — one of wing guards Watson, Cameron Johnson ($23.1 million cap number for 2026-27) or Christian Braun ($21.5 million) to balance the books. Bruce Brown looks like a long shot to return.

If you’re the Joker, is this how you envision spending the winter of a Hall-of-Fame career? Hey, I want Jokic, 31, to retire a Nugget as much as the next fella. Given that he’s still, at heart, a small-town guy with a small-town franchise, the smart money still says he’s not going anywhere.

But we’re talking serious money, too. Jokic could’ve signed a four-year, $278-million supermax contract extension this summer. Instead, he says he’d prefer to kick that gold-plated can to next summer, when he’s eligible for a whopping $359.5 million over five seasons — the largest in NBA history.

What did he say in that second sentence, though? Probably.

Which means between now and next June, the Nuggets have to show him something. Something besides Stan’s checkbook, at any rate.

“I think this team is stacked, still,” NBC/Peacock insider Grant Liffmann, who spent three seasons in the Atlanta Hawks’ front office, told me recently. “He’s a top-5 player in the league. Any team that has a top-5 player in the league has a chance to win a championship every single year, right? And he was the top player in the world pretty much the last five years.”

He was, which is why it feels as if the Nuggets’ title window was 2019-2024. That the S.S. Larry O’Brien just sailed. We just don’t know it yet. Or don’t want to admit it.

Half-full view: They snatched one ring. And it was glorious. A hazy fever dream of confetti and cigar smoke, the time of our lives. The ’23 Finals were over in five games. The Heat rolled over so quickly, we barely had time to savor the moment.

Half-empty: They should’ve won at least two. And we’re one day all going to look back at the fall of 2023 through the spring of 2025 and grimace.

Game 7 against the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2024 is going to loom larger and larger in Nuggets nightmares. If you don’t blow a 20-point second-half lead to a hated rival, at home, you take care of Dallas in the next round. Then you take out Boston, which didn’t want to play you, in the NBA Finals. Jokic is a back-to-back champ, and even Kendrick Perkins bows down.

Didn’t happen. And now you wonder where No. 2 is going to come from. And when.

Meanwhile, on paper, Denver’s depth is down a peg — maybe several — off the roster it built last summer. Lonnie Walker IV is here, though. So is Marvin Bagley III. Even if the Nuggets don’t win a division, at least they’ll lead the Northwest in Roman numerals. Is that enough to convince Joker to stay put?

“It’s a great question,” Pete Babcock, the Nuggets’ GM from 1985-90, told me over the phone. “I think when you’re building a team, or you’re trying to maintain a team at a certain level, if you have a key player that you’re building around, to keep that player, you’ve got to really demonstrate that you are building around them, so that they feel like there’s a chance to win another championship.

“I mean, as an outsider looking in, if you got a player like Jokic, I would assume his decision is going to be based on what he sees around him. And if it feels like there’s a supporting cast of teammates that complement him, and help him be successful, then I think he probably stays put.”

Probably. In the meantime, though, you might want to mute anyone you follow on Xwitter that has Lakers ties for the next 10 months or so. Or friends with Lakers ties.

The NBA’s got more leakers than the Pentagon, and the whispers are already circulating that teams are working to clear cap room for next June so they can make a serious play for the best player on the planet. Including one franchise whose home is just a few steps from the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

“I cannot stress enough how much the title window is absolutely open for this (Nuggets) team,” Liffmann said. “I would consider them a top-5 title contender next year.”

Unfortunately, the West’s top two contenders, the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, keep stealing everybody else’s lunch. This isn’t an Arby’s, sir. If Jokic wants to pop champagne again on this side of the pond, he needs to have a word with the manager. And no time like the present.

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