What does May 8 look like for the Denver Nuggets and NBA?

Before the NBA runs again, it has to walk.

And the league’s first, fragile steps may come as early as May 8, when the NBA will tentatively relax its workout restrictions and allow players to resume individual training sessions at team facilities. This only applies to teams located within cities whose stay-at-home order has been reduced.

The NBA’s target date is the same day Denver’s stay-at-home order will begin to ease, which begs the question: How will the Nuggets proceed?

The answer is cautiously, according to a person familiar with the team’s thinking. The Nuggets will likely watch from afar as other teams implement the league’s exhaustive procedural measures in order to slowly crank back to work. It remains the team’s utmost priority that these workouts don’t lead to a jump in COVID-19 cases. The last thing anyone with the Nuggets – or the league, for that matter – wants to do is get players in for workouts only to have to shut down again.

The other factor, which was addressed in a league-wide memo sent to NBA franchises this week, is travel. Many of the Nuggets aren’t even currently in Denver, meaning it’s unclear how many would take advantage of the sessions. If reasonable, they’ve been encouraged to drive back to Denver instead of fly. Their willingness, of course, depends on how badly players are itching to get in individual sessions with a player development coach. (Head coaches and front-of-bench coaches are prohibited from conducting or even watching the workouts).

The NBA is taking such thorough precautions that it’s mandated each team designate a Facility Hygiene Officer in charge of coordinating the team’s safety efforts. The 14-page memo detailed, among other things, procedures for disinfecting equipment, guidelines on physical distancing, rules for symptom checks, protocols on entering and exiting the facility, and on and on. It even mentioned the possibility of updating a facility’s HVAC system.

Those are the measures necessary for just one player to get some shots up. Imagine the effort it will take to resume an entire league. Before that happens, as Adam Silver has detailed, positive cases need to drop and testing needs to become more widespread. That doesn’t even begin to address scheduling, playoff formatting or finding a safe environment to conduct any kind of return-to-play.

There are hurdles, but there’s also hope.

It’s not insignificant when a pair of owners, both of whom had previously tread lightly, say they’re optimistic about a resumption of play as Dallas’ Mark Cuban and Milwaukee’s Marc Lasry did Thursday.

“Let’s get people getting back in shape and then we’ll figure it out come July or August, what we can do in finishing the season and finishing the season without fans,” Lasry said on CNBC.

Silver has maintained a patient, practical approach ever since the league halted its operations March 11.

“It’s about the data and not the date,” Silver said two weeks ago on a conference call with reporters.

But as the economy creaks open and the numbers begin to trend downward, it’s encouraging and probably healthy to start thinking about some return to normalcy. That might happen, at least in some small basketball sense, over the next two weeks.