MIAMI >> If time is running out on the Nuggets’ symbiotic relationship with Bruce Brown, at least they’ll always have a special place reserved in his pregame routine.

Game 4 of the 2023 NBA Finals, where else but the city he was taught the ritual, belongs in the highlight reel rotation from now on. It will forever inspire comfort and confidence.

In autumn of 2017, Brown was slumping. It was his second year at the University of Miami, where his responsibilities were heightened as the team’s top returning scorer. He wasn’t meeting expectations early on. A shooting drought had ripple effects on his aggressiveness. Coach Jim Larrañaga took notice and offered Brown a solution. Not X’s and O’s advice, though.

“All he told me to do was go watch some highlights,” Bruce told The Post, smiling in a Miami Hurricanes ballcap. “He told me to watch my highlights.”

To this day, Brown pulls up videos of his own highlights to gas himself up before games, especially when he needs some extra gumption.

It’s one of the ways “the U” left an indelible mark on Brown that shaped him into the Nuggets’ indispensable sixth man this season. From the psychological to the positional, his college origins under Larrañaga are directly linked to his current role, in which Brown shepherded the Nuggets within a win of an NBA title Friday night.

His success as a backup point guard has also likely earned him a lucrative payday, making the proceedings bittersweet as a player option looms this offseason. Due to salary cap restrictions, it’s possible Game 5 on Monday will be Brown’s last game as a Nugget, with the veteran likely to seek the payday he didn’t receive when he hit free agency last offseason.

So it’s only fitting that his potential last hoorah is a series passing through Miami — and that he dropped 21 clutch points on 8-of-11 shooting in Game 4. Brown scored 11 of his team’s last 14 in the final 5:10 to secure a 3-1 series lead.

“I’ve always thought that Bruce is like a Swiss army knife,” Larrañaga told The Post. “Whatever the coach is going to ask you to do, the first thing you have to do is have a great attitude toward that. … He’s been so upbeat.”

The specific tool deployed on the Swiss army knife has varied from team to team. But how Denver saw Brown is the same way Larrañaga did. From the time Miami recruited him and through two seasons for the Hurricanes, Brown remembers, “he would just always say that I was going to be a point guard if I wanted to play in the league.”

In high school and at the beginning of his first college season, he played the three. Then Larrañaga started transitioning him to the one. After the 2016-17 season, they had a long conversation about whether Brown should enter the NBA draft as a one-and-done or return to school. The verdict: Brown wanted to improve his handles and point guard skills.