From a 30,000-foot perspective, the Lakers and Clippers are not the hot storylines as the NBA prepares for its 78th season.

It will begin Tuesday night in Denver, where the Nuggets will accept their rings, watch as their championship banner is unveiled and open defense of the title against the Lakers … and coach Michael Malone will likely break into a reflexive whine the first time a Denver media member asks if the Lakers as opening night opponent represents another level of disrespect.

The biggest threat to a Nuggets’ repeat? The consensus is that it will likely come from Phoenix, where Bradley Beal joins Devin Booker and Kevin Durant to give the Suns one of those three-superstar lineups. You know, the ones that were in vogue for quite a while as the game’s stars spent their summers trying to get themselves traded to create superteams.

That still happens, but with varying degrees of success. James Harden was still a Philadelphia 76er at last glance, his demand to come to the Clippers ignored because Sixers’ GM Daryl Morey didn’t get an offer he felt made sense. (Word is, the Sixers and Clippers are still in discussions.) But Damian Lillard is now a Milwaukee Buck, accepting his eventual destination after his first desire, Miami, didn’t work out.

The Lillard/Giannis Antetokounmpo combination, if not establishing a clear favorite’s role for Milwaukee in the East, sets up the likelihood of an all-in series at some point of the playoffs against Boston, which added Jrue Holiday to go with Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown.

“I mean, look: Bradley Beal going with Booker and KD is unbelievable,” Hall of Famer and TNT analyst Reggie Miller said on a teleconference with fellow TNT analyst Jamal Crawford this week. “Lillard with Giannis, that’s a great pairing. But to me I can’t wait to see Jrue Holiday with Tatum and Brown, personally.”

The locals, of course, are keeping track of all of this. Around the Lakers’ building, the number 18 – as in that elusive championship to break the tie with the Celtics – is uttered as reverently as it is in Boston. The most recent banner may hang elsewhere, and there may be any number of contenders, but those ancient rivals will always, always cast a wary eye toward each other.

As for the Clippers? Maybe a sterner approach to the regular season will do the trick after four seasons of expectations that always seemed to run aground, the last three because key players were unavailable at the worst possible time.

“I kind of liked when Coach (Tyronn) Lue kind of (throws) down the gauntlet and says, ‘Look, regular season matters, guys. We just can’t think that we can just show up (and) you guys play when you want to play … and thinking it’s a light switch that we can turn on come April 15’,” Miller said, paraphrasing (but coming pretty close to) Lue’s message when camp opened.

“He’s laying down the foundation that – along with the league and their participation policy type rules now – the regular season is going to matter and ‘how we play in October and November will very much decide how we look in March and April going into the playoffs.’”

It will hinge on health as it usually has for the Clippers, and as it does for each of the league’s 30 teams. Miller estimated that if they get 66 to 70 regular-season games out of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George – 66 to 70 each, now, not combined – they can put themselves in an advantageous spot going into the playoffs.

Their X factor may well be Russell Westbrook, who seemed to reclaim the joy in his game after going from the Lakers to the Clippers at midseason. He took a significant pay cut to re-sign with the Cilppers, and that may indicate how much they think of him and how comfortable he felt when he joined them.

“Talking to people there, he actually took control as being the leader of the team and the other two stars respect that,” Crawford said, adding that the Clippers “are not using what he didn’t do well against him. They’re actually uplifting what he does well. And their team needs it.”

Said Miller: “This is a guy that sacrificed a bag. He could have gone to a middle-of-the-road team and probably earned a lot more than he’s making now. But he went from earning $50, 60 million down to, like, damn near the league minimum. But this is a dude that plays hard. Not every game – every possession, like it’s his last. And if I’m Paul George and I’m Kawhi and I’m seeing this dude in his 30s now playing that hard … I mean, how can you not want to follow Russell Westbrook?”

If Leonard and George need to show up and show out for the Clippers to succeed, the same is true for Anthony Davis with the Lakers. If Davis is healthy and productive, it reduces the burden on LeBron James, who begins his 21st NBA season and had his own health issues last season, tearing a tendon in his right foot that kept him out of 13 games and limited him when he did come back.

“Anthony Davis has to be healthy, and he’s in the same conversation to me like Kawhi: 68 to 74” games, Miller said. “If he plays that range, the Lakers are in it because when he’s playing and he’s healthy, he’s a top ten, top 15 type of player. When he misses time, the Lakers are (likely to struggle) – you can’t rely on LeBron like you used to.

“So if AD is healthy, if Kawhi and PG are healthy, (both teams are) in the mix. I’ll put it to you like this: If I’m Phoenix and if I’m Denver come playoff time, and one of them or both of them are in the conference semifinals, I’m worried.”

And you can make a strong case – and we have, and we will continue to do so – that the comparatively low-profile moves the Lakers made this summer, following up their acquisitions at last season’s trade deadline, make them a quiet but dangerous contender in the West.

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“You can make an argument they had as good a summer as anybody right now,” Crawford said. “I think what they figured out was that how they played the second half of last season is how they’re going to go into this season.

“I thought something that was underrated was that LeBron actually came out physically and mentally and said AD is the guy. Now, he may have told AD that behind closed doors, but you can tell when LeBron was playing last year AD just kind of took a backseat at all times. But with him now saying, ‘Hey, you’re the guy, I’ll take a step back,’ I think that’s going to free AD mentally, almost how Dwyane Wade freed LeBron with Miami when he said, ‘No, this is the guy,’ and LeBron was free to just go be him.

“If Anthony Davis can be that and be healthy, you know, the Lakers will be a tough out.”

The discovery process begins Tuesday. Buckle up.

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