With the Nuggets championship window closed tighter than anyone knows, they’re taking a cheap shot to bust it back open.

It only required 76 days for Josh Kroenke to discover he couldn’t find one man in the entire NBA worthy and/or willing to become the Nuggets general manager.

So what did the Nuggets do to fill the vacuum?

They promoted two minor leaguers, in the hope that Ben Tenzer and Jon Wallace can learn on the job quickly enough to maximize what’s left of center Nikola Jokic’s MVP prime.

Was it a smart move?

Can two half-qualified G.M. candidates be greater than the sum of their resumes?

Time will tell.

But I’d be willing to bet this move was cheap, cheap, cheap.

Tenzer, a salary-cap expert who served as general manager of Denver’s G League affiliate in Michigan, has been named the Nuggets’ vice president of player personnel .

Wallace, a former Georgetown guard who recently was G.M. of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ G League affiliate in Iowa, has been tabbed by the Nuggets as vice president of player personnel.

Tenzer and Wallace are traveling from the backroads of pro hoops straight to the big time.

Godspeed, fellas.

But don’t you worry, because Tenzer and Wallace will be guided by Josh Kroenke, who will serve as the direct report for both of these inexperienced Nuggets executives.

What could possibly go wrong?

Which executive will wield the ultimate authority to make trades or sign a free agent?

Is Kroenke now the team’s de facto president of basketball operations?

Let’s hope not.

By constructing what amounts to a two-headed general manager, the Nuggets are going back to the future.

“Can you believe this (bleep)?” Rex Chapman would tell me back in the day when the Nuggets’ identity was Carmelo Anthony’s high-volume shooting and the pedal-to-the-metal attitude of Allen Iverson, especially when there was a party for A.I. to get to after a game.

Chapman, once a high-flying NBA guard, would sometimes hold out his cell phone in disbelief to show me a heated message from Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke, when the boss wasn’t pleased with the team’s play.

Chapman was hired in 2006 to be V.P. of basketball operations, a job he held for four seasons.

Mark Warkentien, formerly the right-hand man to Jerry Tarkanian when UNLV’s Runnin’ Rebels were all the rage of college hoops, was the vice president of basketball operations.

Hmm, I wonder where Stan and Josh Kroenke got the inspiration for a two-headed general manager?

The last time the Nuggets went down this path, it was as crazy and entertaining as a circus.

Chapman, in cahoots with a fellow Kentucky alum and a Kroenke advisor named Bret Bearup, regularly clashed with Warkentien.

In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for the competing factions of the Nuggets’ front office to work on personnel moves without informing each other.

With a big laugh that couldn’t be hidden in the shadows, Bearup was the real genius of the operation.

Some way, somehow, the creative tension among Nuggets executives worked. Often, in spite of themselves. But never to a championship level.

A team led by Chauncey Billups and Anthony advanced to the Western Conference finals in 2009, before losing to the Lakers in six games.

And then it all blew up, when Anthony wanted out and Bearup attempted to negotiate a trade with the New Jersey Nets for Melo without the knowledge of either Josh Kroenke of Masai Ujiri, who had taken over as G.M. in 2010.

I’m more than willing to give Tenzer and Wallace the benefit of the doubt of being bright, energetic and cursed with potential with no room for failure.

But I don’t yet recognize who plays Bearup, the victim of a heart attack in 2018, in this incarnation of the Nuggets’ front office.

What’s the first move of Tenzer and Wallace?

Well, unless they’re willing and able to trade Michael Porter Jr., the Nuggets are severely hamstrung by more punitive salary-cap restrictions that went into effect shortly after they won the first championship in franchise history two years ago.

Nothing against pending free agent Bruce Brown, but there has to be a better idea than recycling a hero from the past, or signing a thirty-something veteran to a minimum contract, which is the most inspiration former general manager Calvin Booth had a year ago when he took on the chaos brought by Russell Westbrook.

If Booth had been paying attention, like I was, while watching the 2024 Olympics in Paris, he would’ve signed French power forward Guerschon Yabusele instead of throwing cash down the money pit that was Dario Saric.

Yabusele, who’s the player Zeke Nnaji hopes to be if he ever grows up, averaged 11.0 points and 5.6 rebounds in 27 minutes per night for Philadelphia on a one-year, $2.1 million deal.

Could the Nuggets convince Yabusele to fill their taxpayer, mid-level exception at $5.7 million? While I wish that could be the case, it’s probably a pipe dream.

But that’s the kind of magic on the fringes that Tenzer and Wallace must find a way to work, if the Nuggets’ are going to pry back open their championship window.

There’s one piece of Nuggets’ history that this new two-headed general manager absolutely cannot repeat.

The Anthony-led team that advanced to the Western Conference Finals in 2009 fell apart when Melo refused a three-year contract extension a year later.

Beginning July 7, the Nuggets can offer Jokic a three-year, $212 million contract extension.

If Joker doesn’t accept that rich deal within 24 hours, the new Nuggets’ front-office regime might feel very squeamish, with the championship window squeezing the circulation from their fingers.