LOS ANGELES — At halftime, David Adelman showed the pupils a video clip.
Julian Strawther, the rising star of the Nuggets’ preseason, drained a 3-pointer then drifted off for a fraction of a second. So did his teammates. Russell Westbrook, still a Tasmanian devil of a basketball player at 34, raced up the floor and found Kawhi Leonard for a three.
“That’s inexcusable, even playing 2K your whole life,” Adelman said after a 116-102 loss, pointing out that most of the young Nuggets who played Tuesday grew up on the NBA video game — and that Strawther and company have probably even played against a computer version of Russ.