Before they tipped off against Indiana, the Nuggets attempted to embrace their self-created predicament by spinning it as a catalyst to play hard.

The playoffs were beginning early.

Their only choice after that didn’t work is to try again with the same messaging.

“We said that today. We were approaching it as, you know, it’s playoff time,” Christian Braun said after Denver’s 125-120 loss on Sunday. “Maybe in the last couple years, we could kind of coast a little bit. Not this year. It’s playoff time now. … These last three — we said last four — but these last three, we have to approach as playoff games. You’ve gotta win them. You don’t want to slip and have to hope other teams lose.”

Since Feb. 6, the Nuggets have spent 49 of 55 days situated in third place or higher in the Western Conference standings — not a day below fourth.

When they tip off at Sacramento this Wednesday, they could plausibly be as low as seventh place.

That’s the potential price of their first four-game losing streak since March of 2023. With three regular-season games remaining, Denver has a chance to miss the NBA playoffs for the first time since 2018.

“We’ve put ourselves in this hole,” coach Michael Malone said. “We only have ourselves to pull ourselves out of it. … Every game for a while now has been like a playoff game.”

Peak chaos is on the table now. The Nuggets (47-32) woke up Monday in fourth place still, but four teams are deadlocked half a game behind them at 46-32. All four of those teams play on Tuesday night while Denver is idle. Their competition is not exactly stiff.

The Grizzlies play Charlotte. The Clippers play San Antonio. The Warriors play Phoenix. The Timberwolves play Milwaukee. If all four win, it sets up a five-way tie.

According to the elaborate tiebreakers outlined by the NBA, Denver would be fourth of those five — or seventh overall ahead of only Memphis.

The seventh- and eighth-seeded teams will face each other in the Play-In Tournament next week, each needing one win in two tries to make the official playoff field.

“Hopefully, we’re not going to be there,” Nikola Jokic said.

“We’ve been in the 3-seed pretty much the whole year. It’s a tough conference, and we put ourselves in a good spot until now,” Braun said. “We cant let a year’s worth of hard work kind of go out the window.”

Jokic’s historic individual season is in jeopardy of being wasted as well. He is officially averaging a 30-point triple-double after scoring 41 points in Sunday’s loss. The recent scoring uptick hasn’t been cause for optimism, though. It has mostly been out of necessity.

Jamal Murray has missed five consecutive games with a hamstring injury that Malone couldn’t definitively say will be gone by the playoffs.

Michael Porter Jr. is 33.6% from the 3-point line since the All-Star break after a 1-for-9 showing against Indiana. And the Nuggets rank 28th in the league in bench scoring at 26.3 points per game.

They also rank 20th in defensive rating, a more troubling stat that hasn’t been addressed with any sense of urgency aside from the occasional outburst from Malone in a postgame news conference. Subpar rotations behind the initial action were on display once again Sunday, as Tyrese Haliburton happily ceded his scoring responsibility in order to facilitate to open shooters. The Pacers assisted 33 baskets and turned the ball over only six times.

Denver’s opponents commit 13.1 turnovers per game, sixth-fewest in the league.

“The defense, I’ve talked about it a ton. That’s been the most disappointing part of this year,” Malone said, this time in a more subdued tone. “Just the huge drop-off. You’re talking, we didn’t go from (eighth-best) to 12. We didn’t go from eight to 15. We’ve gone from eight to — I don’t even know what it is right now.”

Malone pointed his finger at himself. So did Braun, the team’s lead defensive guard. Silence permeated throughout the home locker room, a notable difference from the mood even last week after their double-overtime loss to Minnesota, when players were discussing and agonizing over the result together.

“I hope (confidence) is high,” Russell Westbrook said during a brief interview scrum. “I can’t speak for everybody in the locker room. But my head stays high.”

Jokic offered a more discouraged but perhaps more matter-of-fact vibe check.

“It’s always when you lose, it’s bad,” he said. “When you win, it’s good. In every locker room. We lost four in a row in a bad moment. So I think we’re a little bit down. But I think a win can always cheer us up or make us feel better about ourselves.”