With just a few days until Nuggets’ training camp, Will Barton looked into the future and projected. He looks around the Pepsi Center practice gym these days and sees enough good players to make the upcoming Nuggets season a good one. He knows he is one of those players.

He knows he has to make it happen for the team to make it happen.

“I don’t want to be stagnant,” Barton said. “I don’t want to be ‘this is who I am.’ ”

The Nuggets are approaching a turning point in their rebuild. They have three players who were on all-rookie teams in the last two seasons (Emmanuel Mudiay, Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic); Barton, who finished third in the most improved award; and a veteran, Danilo Gallinari, who is expected to make a run at an all-star spot this season.

But this is about youth.

The youth must grow for the Nuggets to grow. Flashes shown then are expected to become consistent occurrences now. It’s the only way for the Nuggets, who won 33 games a season ago, to jump-start the win total and possibly make a run at a playoff spot. There are six players 22 years old or younger on the roster and youth has a tough time winning in the NBA.

“We can be good,” Barton said. “We’ve got some good individual talent, some good pieces. Now it’s all about meshing, coming together and finding the right way to play for each other.”

The Nuggets are banking on big improvement to get them where they want to go. The coaching staff and team executives were very happy with the work players put in this summer. Among that group Barton and Gary Harris stood out the most.

According to Hoopsstats.com, the Nuggets had three players among the top 25 most improved last season, ranked by efficiency, an algorithm that crunches a ton of statistical data to determine the players with the most impact on the court.

Harris was fifth on the list. And Harris passed the eye test along with the analytics test, playing 19 more minutes per game than his rookie season and averaging 8.8 more points per game than he did in 2014-15.

Harris was up in every category. And there is an expectation of another jump this season after a summer of work so productive he’s already being raved about within the walls of the Pepsi Center.

“I’ve just been living in the gym, getting better,” he said. “I’m not satisfied about last season.”

Because Harris was already playing starter’s minutes, a simple bump in playing time isn’t going help his stats. But shooting more will. Harris was arguably the Nuggets’ most dependable shooter last season with averages of 46.9 percent from the field, including 35.4 percent from the 3-point line.

But Harris took just 10.1 shots per game. That turned into an average of 12.2 points in 76 games. If he averages the same percentages but takes five more shots, he’d average 16.1 points per game.

And 16.1 points per game would put Harris right on the cusp of being among the top-10 shooting guards in scoring. It would also boost him to the second-leading scorer for the Nuggets.

“I feel like toward the end of the season last season I really started to make some strides,” Harris said. “My confidence was growing. Just want to use that and keep taking even more strides this season.”

Barton, meanwhile, is in constant search of a chip on his shoulder to lean on. Years past it has been easier to find. Now he’s being praised after a breakout season that landed him in the thick of the conversation for postseason awards, that had other teams offering first-round picks to nab him, and that had opponents highlighting him on scouting reports as a player to stop.

“People know I can play,” Barton said. “They won’t be surprised.”

The entire experience helped, Barton said. He played more minutes last season than he had played in his entire career combined to that point. His body needed to adjust. Barton needed to learn to navigate the many ups and downs of an NBA season. He is one of the Nuggets’ most honest players when it comes to outwardly assessing his game.

“I evaluate myself before I start touching a basketball in the summer,” Barton said. “I break down all of my film, looking at all of my offensive clips, all of my defensive clips, really trying to dissect what I can improve and things I did wrong, come up with a game plan and then attack the summer.”

Barton and Harris are part of a youthful core that must have considerable contributions from Jokic and Mudiay. Both were part of all-rookie teams last season. Mudiay participated on the USA Select team that practiced against the gold medal-winning U.S. Men’s National Team before the Olympics. Jokic went on to make headlines in the summer, and become more of household name among NBA fans, helping Serbia to the silver medal in the Olympics. That included an eye-opening performance against the United States.

“He gave the U.S. almost 30 points right?” Barton said. “Now they’re saying, ‘He can be this, he can be that.’ ”

The duo is the Nuggets’ future. They can speed up the process by increasing efficiency, production and consistency for a team looking for young players to step up.

“Things really slowed down for me late in the season,” Mudiay said. “I’m just trying to build off of that, keep my confidence up. Especially with the young team that we have, I’m not trying to put too much pressure on myself. Just go out there and have fun.”