The Nuggets' practice facility is on track to open Friday, but will players utilize it?

The city of Denver’s stay-at-home order is set to expire on Friday, and as long as it does, Nuggets players — and players around the league in state’s where stay-at-home restrictions have been lifted — will be permitted to workout at their team’s facility for the first time in around seven weeks, a league source confirmed to DNVR.

Any workouts taking place involving Nuggets players at Pepsi Center will be voluntary. Players and coaches who are present will also have to operate under strict rules as outlined by the NBA. No more than four players are permitted at the facility at any one time and no head coaches are allowed to attend, but teams can designate six assistant coaches or player development personnel to provide supervision of on-court player workouts, per a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowki. Group activities including practices or scrimmages are prohibited.

Temperature checks will be administered to all essential personnel, players will be required to wear facemasks except when engaging in physical activity, and staff members are required to wear facemasks and gloves at all times, according to The Athletic. Players and coaches must also stand at least 12 feet apart. The ball will reportedly have to be thoroughly cleaned too after each workout. Essentially, workouts will be one-on-zero between one player with coaches watching from a distance.

The news that their facility is on track to open is surely a welcom sight for players who have stayed in town like Nuggets rookie Vlatko Cancar, who has been sequestered in Denver since Pepsi Center’s doors were officially closed on March 19. Cancar can at least now have face-to-face interaction with a member of the Nuggets’ coaching staff in person instead of over a Zoom call, as long as they stay 12-feet apart.

“I stay in touch with our players, call them up, text them, Zoom, whatever it might be because I think communication allows us to stay connected and feel good about ourselves,” Michael Malone said on a Zoom call with the media two weeks ago. “But one player I worry about the most is probably Vlatko. Here’s a guy who’s here by himself in a foreign country, doesn’t have his family around him. He’s by himself and had a birthday about a week ago and this poor guy has to celebrate a birthday by himself in this day in age. I worry about guys in that regard.”

Unlike Cancar, most Nuggets players aren’t in Denver. Gary Harris is back home in Indiana. Torrey Craig and PJ Dozier have returned to South Carolina where they’re both from. Based on conversations with personnel close to the team, don’t expect a flurry of Nuggets players arriving back in Denver upon the news that their facility is open for business either.

The requirements that the NBA has put in place for players to begin using their team’s facilities again are extensive but necessary. However, players don’t have to jump through those hoops to shoot or workout at the private gyms that many have access to and have been using since the NBA officially put its season on hiatus.

If you scroll the social media accounts of players throughout the league, it’s clear that players have still found gyms to play in and people to play against over the last few weeks. It’s not the safest approach during a worldwide pandemic, but it’s what’s happening. Basketball has stopped officially at the organized level but under the radar it’s still going.

But many aren’t, and some Nuggets players along with their counterparts around the league don’t have consistent access to a basket or private gym to workout. The NBA allowing practice facilities to open in city’s that are lifting their stay-at-home orders helps those players out. It also should be noted that the league’s decision is fluid and if Denver’s stay-at-home order extends beyond May 8 the Nuggets could opt to keep Pepsi Center’s doors closed.

When some states and specifically Georgia put plans in motion to ease their stay-at-home orders last week, the league acted quickly after they reportedly got feedback from teams that players had inquired about traveling to Georgia to use the state’s open gyms, according to ESPN. The decision by the league to open practice facilities in city’s and states with loosened stay-at-home orders doesn’t mean a return to play is imminent or even close, but that teams would much rather oversee their players at their own facility under safe and strict league protocol than see them travel elsewhere to play.

It’s all in an effort to protect player’s safety, which has been the league’s No. 1 priority since games were suspended on March 11. If the season does eventually return, which still seems to be a big if, the NBA will continue to make player and personnel safety its top priority too.