OMAHA, Neb. — The first film session of the season came Thursday morning, a group heart-to-heart about what Nuggets coach Michael Malone liked and didn’t like through the first half of a one-week training camp.

It was about 20 clips of offense and 20 more of defense, Malone said.

Offensively it was “ball movement, spacing and what good offense means, and the types of shots we want in our offense,” Malone said. “As opposed to poor shot selection and poor offense.”

Defensively the focus was “reinforcing the positive things that we’re doing but also addressing the things that maybe we’re not comprehending that we should be,” he said.

Malone’s view of the progress his team has made on both ends has ebbed and flowed a bit over the first few days. Take this assessment of the offense: “The thing that’s really encouraging and we had it in the first practice – (Wednesday) night didn’t have it as much, thought there were too many turnovers, too much dribbling and everyone trying to make the play. What I liked about practice one and practice No. 5, which was this morning, was making a play for your teammate, just being unselfish. I think we’ve had some great, great examples of unselfish offense where no one cares who is making the shot, we’re just playing together.”

And of the defense: “Defensively, I think we’re doing a pretty good job for early in the camp, of communicating. We have a lot of versatility that allows us to guard things in different ways, and guys are picking things up pretty quickly, so I’m happy about that as well.”

Three players were held out of practice for precautionary reasons – center Jusuf Nurkic and guards Jamal Murray and Malik Beasley. The Nuggets had just one scheduled practice Thursday, the first time this week they have not had a two-a-day.