Brooklyn Nets hold mini camp ... in Colorado Springs!

Way up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, a Brooklyn team trains ... in mid-May!?!

The Nets are working out this week at Team USA’s Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs ... when they’re not hiking up trails, getting as high as 7,735 feet. That’s 1,700 feet higher than the city! Sources tell NetsDaily most of the team is there with one exception, Isaiah Whitehead, who is at home dealing with a new baby.

Colorado Springs may seem like a random place for the Nets to train until you consider two things. HSS Training Center in Brooklyn is occupied with draft workouts and a free agent mini-camp. The other, bigger issue, is that there’s a reason why the Olympic Training Facility is located there. The higher the altitude, the less oxygen, the better conditioning. Altitude improves attitude. And pictures posted by the team show a number of training and strength and conditioning types are on hand.

Perhaps Nets’ scout B.J. Johnson played a role in this as well. Johnson was the assistant director for the U.S. Men's National team at the Olympic Training Center before the Nets hired him last summer. Makes sense.

So, it’s about sports science and enhancing conditioning and performance. Not really. There’s more to it than that though.

It’s about bonding. it appears from the players’ social media postings that they’re antsy to get back into the gym together despite finishing with the league’s worst record. It’s that culture thing.

It’s happened before. Deron Williams brought the 2013-2014 team together in California for off-season workouts, but that was in mid-August. This is May! The playoffs are still going on. It’s something a team run by Kenny Atkinson would do. Work. Work. Work. It’s infectious and the players are boasting about it.

Some of the players posted Snapchats and then pictures/videos via Twitter and Instagram to help identify where they were. The Nets did not make any of this public, however.

Spencer Dinwiddie posted one of the more exclusive videos on Twitter showing the high altitude training, then mysteriously deleted it. Then it reappeared!

Caris LeVert, Justin Hamilton and Director of Player Performance Zach Weatherford all made appearances.

Anyway, we have photographic proof of the players’ efforts.

That’s the Manitou Incline in nearby Manitou Springs, a trail that in some places is as steep as 34 degrees and rises more than 2,000 feet of elevation in less than a mile.

They posed for fans too along the way, little ones and big ones, including fellow athletes. That’s Brittany Reinbolt, Team USA Bobsled Pilot and Womens Football World Champion posing with Jeremy Lin,

And here’s Lin with 2012 Olympic Taekwondo Medalist Paige McPherson.

And the Nets can’t go anywhere, even a restaurant, without Brook Lopez and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson hooking up with some smaller fans ...

Hey, Rondae has a bun! And now he knows how to describe it in Mandarin.

Maybe the best moment. Yesterday, one random fan from Colorado Springs posted on Instagram how he went to 7-11, met the Nets and forgot what he went there for! Funny stuff.

Good times, good guys.

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Told “most - if not all" the Nets players were there.” Don’t know for how long, but they’ve already been there for “a few days.” Seems like a worthwhile investment.