Keeler: DeMarcus Cousins gives Nuggets toughness. Grit. Attitude. And a break for MVP Nikola Jokic.

The screens are worth the price of admission alone. DeMarcus Cousins doesn’t move guys. Dude pancakes them.

“I felt like I had two cement blocks on my feet,” Boogie laughed after putting up two points and six rebounds over 12 minutes in his Nuggets debut on Sunday.

Hey, if this 10-day contract with the Nuggets doesn’t work out, Broncos general manager George Paton could do a lot worse at offensive tackle than a 6-foot-10, 270-pound road-grader with a chip on his shoulder.

“He gives us grit,” Nuggets guard Austin Rivers said of Cousins, who helped carry Denver to a 117-111 win over the Detroit Pistons.

“Everybody knows he’s an enforcer … he’s still got to get his legs back, but he’s going to be big for this team. Especially with that second unit. He’s going to be a problem.”

A good one, you hope. Because if Sunday night was a harbinger of what’s to come, then Boogie gives the Nuggets two things they haven’t had since Mason Plumlee left town a couple summers ago:

One, a true center to spell Nikola Jokic, the reigning NBA MVP; and two, a physical presence who won’t take guff. From anybody.

“This guy, after playing really well in Milwaukee, was sitting at home waiting for his phone to ring,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after Cousins put up one bucket, one airball, six boards and one technical foul in 12 minutes.

“That’s crazy to me. I don’t know if people are scared of him or what. But I’m not scared of him. I love him.”

At one point, Boogie even followed Malone out to midcourt when his boss was protesting a call against Aaron Gordon.

“We were just laughing about that,” Malone, the Boogie Whisperer, said of his new center, whom he’d coached in Sacramento. “He was like, ‘Coach, man, I gotta calm you down.’”

Boogie turns 32 next summer. At this point, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about toughness. Intangibles. Wisdom. And keeping the Joker’s legs fresh for the stretch run.

“I didn’t have my best shooting performance, but I made a couple plays,” Cousins said after misfiring on six of seven attempts from the floor. “The ultimate thing (was) we got a win.”

More to the point, he helped to keep the second unit from sinking, especially late in the third quarter. The Nuggets’ bench outscored Detroit’s by a count of 41-37. Baby steps.

“That’s the mentality that group needs,” Malone said of that Cousins grit. “They’ve got to have toughness. You’re not just going to come out and run your offense and be all pretty. We’ve got to disrupt that, be physical. And if they can do that, (that unit) can help our team a lot.”

When Cousins entered the game with 2:17 left in the first quarter to spell Jokic, Ball Arena cheered him like an old friend.

“Get it, Boogie!” somebody cried from Section 130.

Fourteen seconds later, the big man air-balled a jumper in the paint. With 1:26 to go, he bricked a couple free-throw attempts, then promptly got whistled for a shooting foul on the other end of the floor.

But he also proved to be a willing passer who still sets killer screens, one of which helped to free up fellow newbie Bryn Forbes on a silky jumper about 25 seconds into the second frame.

But Boogie saved the fun stuff for the third quarter. With 1:49 to go in the stanza, he drew a charge on Rodney McGruder, the Almost-Nugget. Cousins finally got on the board with a spin move, a miss, and a putback with 1:33 left.

The big lug followed that up by boxing out on a missed trey by Killian Hayes, bodying up his man by pushing off with one hand while bouncing the loose ball high off the floor with the other. Cousins eventually snatched it the way Todd Helton used to snag one-hop throws at first base for the Rockies.

At the end of that stretch, Malone fearlessly went out to center court and gave Cousins a big hug.

“He’s a tough cat,” the coach said. “He’s not going to back down.”

As long as Boogie’s around? Neither will they.