A couple of weeks ago when the Celtics were in Denver, I mentioned to Nuggets coach Brian Shaw that I had recently spoken to mutual friend Frank Hamblen, a longtime NBA coach.

Shaw smiled.

“Frank’s the one who got me into coaching,” he said.

Asked if he was thinking of harming Hamblen right about now, Shaw laughed. And he did the same last night at the conversation’s recollection. These are difficult times for Shaw and the Nuggets, 11-of-12 after last night’s defeat to the Celts.

He said he’s been trying everything to get his players motivated through a series of injuries and the trading of starting center Timofey Mozgov for draft picks (sound familiar?).

Shaw even admitted to rapping a pregame personnel report. Seriously.

But last night, despite the Nuggets’ continued troubles on the floor, Shaw was back in friendly territory. He was a first-round draft pick of the Celtics in 1988 and had a sterling rookie season. Then, after a year in Italy and a court case, he returned for another year and a half before being traded to Miami. Shaw played his last four seasons with the Lakers, the first three of them championship years, but he maintains a warm spot for what these days is, in Fahrenheit terms, a very chilly city.

“The things that I take away from it is I came in and got to be teammates with some of the greatest players to ever play the game — Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, DJ [Dennis Johnson],” Shaw said. “So as a young player coming in to that, being around Red Auerbach and some of the other Celtic legends that were always around and available, there’s no value to what you can place on that and what you’re able to take away from that, to over all these years still have a connection with all those guys.”

Asked for an Auerbach story, Shaw obliged.

“Right after I got drafted, I was trying out for the Olympic team in ’88, and we played an exhibition game in Baltimore,” he said. “I’d never eaten lobster before in my life, and he and his wife and his granddaughter took me to dinner, and they had these big lobsters on the table. I’d never eaten it before, didn’t know how to eat it, and I was trying to play it off like I did.

“I reached to try to crack one of the claws and I cut my hand, and it was bleeding all over the lobster. He looked at me and he said, ‘You never had lobster before, have you.’ And I couldn’t play it off anymore. I said, no, I hadn’t, and he showed me how to use the cracker to crack the shell.

“That’s probably the funniest story I have of him, other than the second-hand cigar smoke that I got blown in my face.”

Shaw finds it funny in an interesting way that so many of his Celtic mates have gone on to not only coach, but direct basketball operations around the NBA.

“Larry’s running the Pacers, Danny [Ainge]’s running the Celtics, Kevin was running Minnesota and he’s now the head coach in Houston,” Shaw said. “DJ was a coach. Jim Paxson was a GM.

“This year at the head coaches’ meetings, we had a coaches clinic. Rick (Carlisle) runs it every year, and Larry and Kevin came back and were the guest speakers. We all actually sat around and told a bunch of stories about our time with the Celtics and how it kind of led to everybody doing what they’re doing now.”

What the Nuggets are doing now isn’t making Shaw or anyone in Denver sleep easy. He’s questioned his club’s effort, saying before last night’s game, “It’s not to point fingers at anybody. I have to do better; we have to do better collectively as a group. If we lose games playing hard and we’re just not as good as the teams we’re playing against, then we can live with that. But it hasn’t always been the case in terms of just having a consistent level of effort.”

Yesterday morning, he had only to gaze out his window at the Four Seasons to glimpse the kind of glory of which he once was a part.

“It brought back great memories,” he said of watching the Patriots’ rolling celebration. “I was fortunate enough to be involved in a few parades (2000, ‘01, ‘02 with the Lakers), and it’s a time when you get to feel the appreciation of the fans that give you the energy to go out there and do your job night in and night out and share that time with them as you go through the parade.”

Inside the Garden last night, Shaw was back to an NBA grind that has been particularly unkind to his struggling club. It’s not to the point where Frank Hamblen has to use a remote starter on his car or anything, but knowing that this is how it sometimes goes in this league doesn’t make it any easier.