DENVER – The Knicks’ defensive woes won’t get any easier Monday night when they take on potential Triple Crown winner Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets.

The three-time NBA MVP is somehow having perhaps the best statistical season of his 10-year NBA career. He ranks first in the league in rebounding (13.7 per game) and second in both scoring (30.3) and assists (11.1) per game. his team’s first 16 appearances.

All three of those numbers would represent career highs for Jokic, who missed three games earlier this month due to the birth of his son.

The six-time All-Star is also logging a career-best 38.1 minutes per game this season, second only to Knicks wing Mikal Bridges (38.3) during Saturday’s action.

Bridges was essentially benched by Tom Thibodeau for the final 10:03 of Saturday’s loss at Utah, finishing with season-lows in minutes (33), points (seven) and field goal percentage (3-for-15).

Fellow newcomer Karl-Anthony Towns, who will pull the primary defensive assignment against Jokic, also had a rough game on both ends of the court. Although KAT grabbed 16 rebounds against the Jazz, the starting center missed eight of nine three-point attempts and finished the game with a whopping minus-34 defensive rating.

Thibodeau and the players who spoke to the media afterward — Bridges, Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson — lamented the team’s poor defensive effort instead of a rocky shooting night (39.0 percent overall) for their first loss in five games.

“I think we just need to stop and communicate with each other a little bit more,” said Bridges, who was benched in favor of veteran reserve Cam Payne. “I think it’s hard, we’re not the only team, but it’s just human nature, sometimes when you miss shots and you get a little bit let down, and your voice drops.

“So we just have to get past that and still communicate with each other. We can’t miss and confuse our defense. If we miss, we have to get even more on the other side. We just have to get better at that.”

The 7-foot Towns certainly needs to be better defensively against a player of Jokic’s caliber.

Thibodeau even acknowledged after Saturday’s game that he was considering starting backup Jericho Sims at center in the fourth quarter after posting a plus-19 nine minutes earlier in the game, including a share of the 17-0 series in the third quarter that pulled the Knicks within two.

The Knicks have clearly sacrificed interior defense after the defection of Isaiah Hartenstein and the latest injury to Mitchell Robinson. The trade-off is that Towns, a four-time All-Star, leads the team in scoring (26.1 ppg) and rebounding (12.5) in 15 appearances.

Yet through Saturday, the Knicks (9-7) ranked 21st in the NBA in defensive rating with 115.7 points allowed per 100 possessions, which Hart called “a recipe for disaster” on Saturday night.

“We’re just not playing well enough,” said Hart, who was the worst team at minus 37 in Utah. “We are not physical enough. We don’t give enough ball pressure, myself included.

‘We have to find out. We can’t just be an attacking team and we have been that way for the first (16) games. And when you have games like this where you’re not shooting well and you’re not figuring it out offensively, it looks bad.”

The 29-year-old Jokic could become the first player in NBA history to lead the league in both assists and rebounds per game in the same season. Wilt Chamberlain led the league in total boards and assists in 1967-68, but he trailed Oscar Robertson in assists per game.