Jameer Nelson talks "Dig Deep Week" with Nuggets.com

As has already been established here at BSNDenver.com and elsewhere across the Nuggets Nation, Jameer Nelson is one cool cat. Not only is he an All-Star and general on the floor, but he’s also one of the best teammates and all-around good people in the NBA.

This past week Nelson flew almost the entire Nuggets organization to his hometown of Philadelphia, PA, for a week-long private workout (as Harrison previously detailed here) where the team was visited by a Navy SEAL in addition to playing paintball and grubbing down on Nelson’s dime. Per Nuggets.com:

What motivated you to organize this most recent week of events for you and your Nuggets teammates?
I think it’s very important to have the camaraderie that you need off the court that allows you to carry things on the court. When you look at the best teams – and going off of my experience with the teams that I’ve been on – not everybody hung out together off the court. We would do things every now and then to keep our relationships going, and like I said, it carries over to the court. It’s one of those things that makes it easier to trust one another.

What was the highlight for you?
We had a NAVY seal come and talk to us. He explained the anaerobic threshold, meaning you always have more left in the tank. You have your nervous system shutting you down listening to your brain saying you’re tired and you can’t do it and you’re frustrated. He put us through a workout. It was intense. It wasn’t easy. It was one of those things that we did the same exact thing over and over and he wanted to see who was going to break. It was unique because in the middle of the workout he made us do certain things with our eyes closed so we wouldn’t look at each other. You want to get the best that you can get out of your workout and not look at the other guy and say keep pushing because you need to learn how to push yourself. We did that. We also played basketball. We did paintball and then we went to dinner.

What made you decide to re-sign with the Nuggets?
The atmosphere in Denver and what’s going on there. It took me back to my Orlando days when I first got there and we had a bunch of new pieces and a new coach. We put things together and we were on the up-rise. Nobody believed we could do it, but we made history down in Orlando. The things we did and the amount of wins that we had. We had a bunch of guys that nobody really wanted. Everybody thought this guy couldn’t play here that guy couldn’t play, but we stuck together and we did things together and we won a lot of games. We all helped turn the organization around.

The Denver Nuggets are a young team. And with youth comes the innate characteristic of being highly impressionable. With guys like Nelson around it’s safe to assume Denver’s young core is learning the right stuff in the best way possible. Now all that’s left is to see how this translates to the court starting Oct. 2 when the Nuggets participate in their first preseason game against the Clippers in Los Angeles.

Stay tuned to BSN Denver for more Jameer Nelson-related awesomeness as it inevitably transpires.