With the Nuggets on the verge of getting run out of the NBA playoffs and booed off their home court, coach Michael Malone’s face turned an angry shade that shouted: Code Red!

“We’ve got to start fighting for ourselves,” Malone urged his players Tuesday night.

The NBA playoffs dare a team to quit, take its ball and go home. For most of Game 2 against San Antonio, the Nuggets stunk. But given a chance to surrender, they fought. And that’s why Denver rallied from 19 points down to beat the Spurs 114-105, evening this best-of-seven series at one victory apiece.

The Nuggets know when their coach is code-red angry. He calls a timeout with the force of a heavyweight boxer throwing a punch and stomps off the Denver bench, mournful eyes pointed toward heaven. But here’s the real sign Malone’s blood pressure is about to blow like Old Faithful: He tucks one thumb under each of the lapels of his sport coat and pops the material so hard onlookers fear for the jacket’s survival.

That’s a sign of love, insisted Nuggets guard Jamal Murray.

Well …

“It’s a little bit of mad, too,” confessed teammate Gary Harris. “Coach wants to win badly.”

Nobody felt the coach’s ire and love more than Murray. He broke out of the slump in the fourth quarter, scoring 21 of his 24 points to lead a comeback that saved Denver’s season.

In every playoff series, there is a tipping point, where a team either stares down trouble and self-doubt or is left with a long, hot summer to contemplate all its basketball sins and regrets.

That moment for Denver arrived much sooner than anyone, particularly Malone and his players, could have ever imagined. After sweating and grinding through 82 games of the regular season to earn the No. 2 seed the West, it required fewer than six quarters of uptight and ugly basketball to force us to ask the unthinkable:

Were those 54 regular-season victories nothing more than a tease? And, worse, could it be this team was a fraud, waiting to be exposed under the intense, unforgiving klieg lights of the playoffs?

Prior to tipoff, Malone had taken such a philosophical approach to the must-win situation facing his young Nuggets that you could almost smell your uncle’s pipe tobacco in his words.

“If we go on the court with the mind-set of ‘We can’t lose Game 2’ and we play tight and we play nervous, we’ll have no chance to win,” Malone said.

Then the Nuggets went out and played like it was their first piano recital, so tense they couldn’t tell the difference between the black and white keys.

With eight minutes, 28 seconds remaining in the second quarter, Denver found itself down 41-23, having missed 22 of its 31 field-goal attempts. Nikola Jokic’s face was pure exasperation. Unable to buy a basket after missing an open jumper that could have won Game 1, Murray was lost in his own head. Veteran Paul Millsap was shackled to the bench with two fouls.

And the crowd in the Pepsi Center, which showed up for a party, reacted the way people do when they feel duped.

As Malone called a timeout, the booing rained from the rafters. He angrily barked at the referees, as if they had forgotten to hand out box juices and hugs to the dejected faces in the Denver huddle. All the coach got, however, was a technical foul, which San Antonio allowed to put the Nuggets in a 19-point hole.

The clock struck two minutes ’til doom. The tipping point had arrived.

“At that point and time, I didn’t sense we were fighting,” said Malone, who admitted to concern that his team was on the verge of a playoff collapse. “The game was running away from us.”

But what happened next?

The Nuggets ended the pity party, and grew up.

It was Murray who grew the most. In the fourth quarter, the Nuggets rallied from an seven-point deficit and bullied San Antonio so badly that flustered coach Gregg Popovich earned a technical foul of his own, while crossing halfcourt in a desperate attempt to call a timeout. Murray could not miss, including a delicate floater from 16 feet that put Denver ahead to stay, at 101-99, with 3:53 remaining in the final period.

“End of story,” said Popovich, who morphs into Mr. Grumpypants when things don’t go his way.

Well, nanny-nanny-boo-boo. Sorry, Pop. But this story and this best-of-seven series are far from over.

And the Nuggets have only begun to fight.