Basketball practice, in general, is this linear thing: You work on your system, offensively and defensively. You sprinkle in skill work. You run through the opponent’s sets. And if there is a truly special player you’re opposing, you might have one of your players imitate that star player to give your team a better idea of how to defend him.

Philosophically, everyone is getting ready to play. And most will actually play in the game.

This Nuggets camp is that, but also kind of not, which is very interesting and let me explain to you what I mean.

In the offseason, coach David Adelman, his staff and team executives powowed about what gave the Nuggets the most trouble last season and how to properly address that. Part of what they came up with is a concept most associated with football teams more than anything a basketball team could, or would, do.

And that is put together a ‘scout’ team.

Starting with the draft, the Nuggets goal was to snatch up as many young, hyper-athletic players as they could find. Enter draft picks Trevon Brazile and Bryce Hopkins. Enter free agents Alpha Diallo, Marvin Bagley III, Cam Whitmore, Lonnie Walker IV and Ryan Nembhard.

They are players the organization wants on the the team to raise the Nuggets’ overall athletic profile, to be sure. Their primary purpose, however, is a simple mission: Hound and harass the starters all day, everyday. Adelman wants the starters to be uncomfortable. He wants them to learn how to operate through the discomfort that is sure to come in an NBA where defenses are attacking more all over the court.

On Nembard, Adelman shook his head.

“He embarrassed our pick and roll defense last year…I did not rewatch that tape,” he said. “For our main people, they need to play against guys like him in practice. Sometimes you need guys like that on your roster or on a two-way to impact practice for what we struggled in. Which is speed, and picking up full, and a smaller guy crawling into Jamal Murray.”

In other words, what the Nuggets are doing goes beyond the routine system install and tweaks to concepts already known. They identified types of players that gave them problems last season and postseason — and then populated the roster with those types of players to help the starters get used to them.

It’s an athletic scout team whose purpose is to, well, be as athletic as they possibly can. That’s the look Adelman wants. Not Xs and Os based; physically-based. Can you outlast quicker players? Can you still operate offensively against lengthier players? Can you still be yourself when the defense gets into you on every inch of the court?

The drill, in this case, is simply playing ball day after day after day against the prototype players that gave the Nuggets trouble, so that they don’t give them trouble this time around.

It’s a unique approach to getting ready for a season. The closest thing I can compare it to would be coaches that put six defenders on the court against five offensive players in order to simulate a high-pressure defensive opponent.

But those are one-off events. This is full immersion into downloading information that Murray and Nikola Jokic, Cam Johnson, Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon can use on a nightly basis. NBA teams, as a collective, are playing faster than ever, pressuring more than ever, and the teams that cannot navigate those waters have a shelf life.

And yes, does Adelman need the new crop of players to also be ready to play on the court for the Nuggets? Of course. And they will be. It’s just not his primary concern right now.

“It’s been years since we’ve had, I would say, the back end of our team be this athletic,” Adelman said. “Which really helps our starters.”