OKLAHOMA CITY >> Aaron Gordon will always answer a teammate’s phone call.

So when Christian Braun woke him up with a FaceTime notification last year, he rolled out of bed and accepted. Gordon was in China. Braun was in Missouri, seeing his mom’s sister one last time. She had been a quadriplegic for years and had only a few hours to live. Braun wanted to see her smile.

She long had a fondness for one of the Nuggets. Call it a crush.

So Braun tried to surprise his aunt, not knowing Gordon was on the other side of the world.

“He was literally sleeping in China,” he told The Denver Post. “He didn’t have to answer the phone. But he picked up in the middle of the night. … He turned on his lights, got out of bed, showed her his new tattoo.”

Gordon stayed on the phone with Braun’s family for about 10 minutes, chatting with his biggest admirer. “I love you,” she said to Braun, setting herself up for a punchline that made the whole room laugh, “but Aaron’s my favorite player.”

It was a difficult day. Braun’s aunt died about four hours later. But for a few minutes, she beamed.

“She was kind of coming in and out of (consciousness) a little bit,” Braun remembered. “And I showed her Aaron so she could see, and her eyes lit up, man.”

Gordon’s selflessness is the stuff of legend in Denver. He famously trimmed and tailored his game to fit a reduced role after being traded in 2021 from Orlando, where he was the first option, the ball-in-hand star. He embraced dirty work and a cerebral reexamination of basketball, enlightened by Nikola Jokic. His gratitude for that transformation was so immense that he once bought Jokic a massive customized saddle, decorated with the MVP’s name and the Serbian flag, to commemorate his love of horse-racing. And a car. Gordon also bought Jokic a car.

On a team that features an inner-circle Hall of Famer at center and a generational playoff riser at point guard, Gordon’s many talents have often been tertiary. Teammates, coaches and front-office employees proudly point out that it’s not a relegation but a willing sacrifice. The 29-year-old power forward has learned to appreciate his freedom from the limelight.

So as the Nuggets see it, nobody is more deserving of it.

They’ll say it’s an act of karma that Gordon is now responsible for two playoff game-winning buckets in as many weeks, even though the ball isn’t meant to go through his hands with games on the line. He is Denver’s hero who doesn’t reach for the cape. It just keeps finding him.

It found him in Los Angeles, where Jokic’s airball floated left of the rim before time expired in Game 4 of the first round. And it found him again at the end of an instant classic Game 1 in Oklahoma City, where Russell Westbrook couldn’t see any daylight in the paint during a last-gasp transition attack. Gordon spotted up on the left wing, collected Westbrook’s pass and knocked down a 3-pointer with 2.8 seconds remaining.

Trailing by 13 with 6:30 to go, the Nuggets stunned the 68-win Thunder on its home court with a 121-119 win, two days after surviving a fierce seven-game series with the Clippers. And as Gordon overheard a teammate singing his praises in the locker room afterward, he muttered to himself, “Aw, shucks.”

When Gordon went out of his way to charm and comfort Braun’s family, he was also facing his own year of mourning. His older brother, Drew, died in a car crash last May. Gordon leaned on his teammates for support. He spent his offseason hanging out with Julian Strawther, who had just finished his rookie year with the Nuggets and was staying in town to work out at Ball Arena. Gordon would invite him over to his Denver home to watch movies — “a wide range of genres,” Strawther said, including a western. As with most hobbies, Gordon’s curiosity was boundless.

“Obviously, he was going through some things,” Strawther told The Post. “So, me and him spent a lot of time together this summer, just hanging out and being boys instead of teammates. I love AG like a brother.”