DENVER — The hamstrings get the last word. Always. Aaron Gordon turned 31 on Sept. 16. Like most of the rest of us over 35, his body doesn’t recover the way it did when he was 23 or 24, kissing the sky with graceful ease.

“So I got into the league at 18 years old … and I could roll out of bed and play 48 minutes and then go back to bed and wake up the next day like I didn’t play, ready for a back-to-back,” Gordon said Monday during Nuggets media day at Ball Arena.

“And I used to make fun of all the old guys for having to get to the gym an hour early, or two hours early, (doing) all these warm-ups and cool-down exercises and all these tricks of the trade that they picked up throughout their time in the (NBA).”

Mr. Nugget doesn’t make fun of all the old guys anymore. Because after 13 seasons of beating them, he’s joined ’em. Welcome to life after 30, dude. Father Time dishes out the cruelest tricks of all.

“I need to be here much earlier and stay much later,” Gordon admitted. “And I need to invest a lot more time warming up and a lot more time cooling down so I can be available for these guys.”

Gordon’s played 87 games, combined, the last two regular seasons. His soft tissue lets him down. When it’s not the hammies, it’s the calves, barking so loud the entire Western Conference can hear.

“AG is one of one,” Nuggets executive vice president Jon Wallace said Monday. “We know what he means to this team and this organization. We expect him to have a bounce-back season.”

It’s not a stretch to say the Nuggets can’t win another title without him. AG does so many things well that nobody on the roster, not even Nikola Jokic, ever quite picks up the slack when he’s gone.

Damage from the dunker spot. Treys on the wing. Defense, mostly. When he was on the court last season, per Screwball.com, the Nuggets posted an offensive rating of 128.2, a defensive rating of 114.2 and a net rating of +13.3 over their opponents per 100 possessions. When he wasn’t on the floor, that net rating dipped to minus-2.7, a difference of a whopping 16.1 points per 100.

You want to know why the Nuggets added to their training staff over the summer? Denver’s offensive rating last season rose by 9.6 points per 100 possessions when AG was on the court. The Nuggs’ defensive rating dropped opponents’ scoring pace by 6.4 points per 100 possessions.

“When Aaron was healthy, our defensive running numbers were really good,” coach David Adelman said, “so we finished possessions well.”

And when he wasn’t, hide your eyes. Over the last three postseasons, the Nuggets’ playoff record is 16-16 with two second-round exits and one first-round stunner. When AG has scored at least 14 points in a postseason contest, Denver has gone 11-5. The Nuggets were 27-9 in the 36 games he played last season and went 27-19 in the 46 that he didn’t.

It’s science, all right. Just not the rocket kind.

“The best ability is availability, and that rings true,” Gordon said. “I just pace myself. That’s really where it comes from … making sure that I do everything that I can in my power to stay healthy and stay available.

“At some point in time, you need your whole team to win a championship and to win it all. So it’s still there … When we have all of our guys and we’re available, we’re still the best in the league.”

When. If. With no Peyton Watson, Gordon has more on his plate than ever before. And he’s good with that. Mr. Nugget helped to sell newcomer DeMar DeRozan, who’s known AG and his late brother Drew forever, on Nugg Life. If he can play at least 45-50 games with DeRozan this season, all the better.

“There’s a certain level of urgency that’s necessary, but bad teams panic,” Gordon noted. “Bad teams push the panic button, that’s what they do — they panic and they just never get any traction, but there is a certain level of urgency and there is a certain level of complacency that comes with mastery. So we’re fighting that and making sure that we have the right level of urgency.”

As Media Days go, the urgency on display Monday afternoon proved curious, even by Nuggets standards. It was less hopeful and cordial than, say, last fall, when the additions of Cam Johnson, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jonas Valanciunas and the Bruce Brown reunion gave this team, on paper, its best roster since the ’23 champions — and the kind of veteran mix-and-match that Michael Malone would’ve craved.

The vibe also felt somewhat sunnier, by the same token, than the slog of September 2024. What a hoot. GM Calvin Booth noted, out loud, that it would be “incredibly hard” to land Jokic another title. Jamal Murray floated the idea of becoming an MMA fighter. Russell Westbrook said all the right things — a trend that, no shock, became the exception instead of the norm. In the most telling moment besides Murray’s UFC wanderlust, Malone admitted that there was truth to the rumors of behind-the-curtains conflict with Booth, adding that, “through those disagreements and through those conversations, you come to a greater good.”

Yeah, on that last one, maybe, not so much.

Fast forward to Monday, and the mood, and indeed the faces, still wore the scars of last spring’s first-round playoff loss to the Timberwolves’ JV. Adelman, in particular, came off as saltier than any Malone September presser that most of us jackals in the media could recall.

“I understand we’re going to say things, there’s going to be narratives, all that stuff,” Adelman said. “The men in that (locker) room … won the most road games in history of the franchise and have the best offense in the NBA. I know you guys want to ignore that, but that’s what they did.”

And …

“Last year we got upset in the playoffs, that (expletive) happens,” Adelman said. “They put themselves in the dance, and they’ve been a part of it for a long time … we’re going to be in the mix.”

And …

“I’ve got, like, five other things to do,” Adelman said shortly after sitting down, “so let’s, uh …”

If the Nuggets were that defensive in the playoffs, Coach, the tenor of Monday’s questions might’ve been a little different. But carry on.

“Yeah, I think with Aaron, everybody knows his impact on our team,” Adelman said of No. 32 in blue. “It’s a conversation that we’re going to have with Aaron personally, and I just think the franchise as a whole — kind of get him through the season properly, (see) where he’s at, how he feels … it was incredible, when he came back last year from injury, the amount of things that we were not running for a couple of months that we immediately went back to.”

I asked former Nuggets great LaPhonso Ellis, now a hoops analyst with FOX Sports, what was missing last spring. He texted back the following:

“1. A FULLY healthy AG…we’ve missed his late-clock switch-ability defensively, presence as an IMMENSE lob threat, offensive floor spacing and occasional small-ball 5 ability;

2. A consistent third scorer;

3. A WING defender who can shoot;

4. A return to the defensive edge we had under Michael Malone.”

In a perfect world, Gordon has a hand in all four of those. But if AG’s not right, there are about 17 different ways the best-laid plans, as we learned in Minneapolis, could go so badly wrong.

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