Players look for ways to keep fit

Denver’s players, if they’re so willing, have the same assignment each day: Go to their phone or tablet, launch an app and view their individualized daily workout plan that was created by the Nuggets’ strength and conditioning staff.

For now, it’s the best idea the Nuggets have — as they, like every other NBA team, are figuring out new ways to do almost everything.

Nobody knows when NBA players will be in a game again, with the season on hold because of the global coronavirus pandemic. Most don’t even have access to basketball courts right now, and every team training facility is shuttered right now for safety reasons. Public health clubs and gyms are off-limits, too.

The workouts, somehow, continue. Teams cannot mandate that players take part, but common sense dictates that players still get some sort of workout plan to follow.

“It’s a very interesting subject,” said Claus Antunes de Souza, the Nuggets’ assistant strength and conditioning coach. “Keeping an athlete motivated when they don’t know when they’re going to perform is probably one of the hardest tasks ever. Even in an offseason you kind of have a defined date when you’re going to report back. So not having one of those dates in mind, it makes things very tricky.”

The Nuggets get their workouts to players on a platform called Teambuildr, a site where remote workouts can be programmed and progress can be tracked. The site says a half-dozen NBA teams are using its technology, with Oklahoma City, Houston, Charlotte, Minnesota and Detroit being the others.

Celtics coach Brad Stevens said his team is doing something similar through what he called “voluntary virtual sessions.”

“There’s been bikes delivered, there’s been individual weights delivered,” Stevens said.

LeBron James of the Lakers has been self-isolating at home for the last two weeks, part of the process his team had to go through after two players tested positive for the coronavirus.

James is one of the more fortunate NBA shutins. His Brentwood estate has a gym, and James has been going through onceor twice-daily workouts for most of this hiatus. But he hasn’t been playing basketball.

“My body was like, ‘Hey man, what the hell is going on?’ ” James said this week.

His postseason-prep is on hold, like everything else in the NBA.