Inside the Nuggets’ team meal room in the Orlan­do bub­ble, team offi­cials had ban­ners made depict­ing all 17 play­ers that have now made it safe­ly to the NBA’s re-start.

Out­side of it, in a pub­lic space where oppos­ing teams walk on their way to prac­tice, the Nuggets pro­ject­ed a much dif­fer­ent message.

The team cre­at­ed two sep­a­rate ban­ners that illus­trate the social jus­tice mes­sages the orga­ni­za­tion has been ampli­fy­ing for more than a month. One cel­e­brates for­mer con­gress­man John Lewis, the late civ­il rights icon who spent his life fight­ing for equal vot­ing rights.

“Get in good trou­ble, nec­es­sary trou­ble and help redeem the soul of Amer­i­ca,” his quote reads above the icon­ic pic­ture of him star­ing down Alaba­ma state troop­ers on what even­tu­al­ly became known as Bloody Sunday.

After Lewis died last month, Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one encour­aged his entire team to “Good Trou­ble,” the doc­u­men­tary on Lewis’ life.

https://t.co/xZDnOno3lO pic.twitter.com/GoBc48Iv8A

— Mike Singer (@msinger) August 16, 2020

The oth­er ban­ner reads “Don’t shut up and drib­ble,” and fea­tures 11 black-and-white pho­tos tak­en from protests that Nuggets play­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in. Vet­er­ans Gary Har­ris and Jera­mi Grant both con­tributed to the collection.

“I think it speaks vol­umes when you walk by our food room and you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly see world cham­pi­onship ban­ners,” Mal­one said. “You see ban­ners reflect­ing the cur­rent mood across our coun­try, which is terrific.”

https://t.co/xZDnOno3lO pic.twitter.com/uRxaZltkwn

— Mike Singer (@msinger) August 16, 2020

While oth­er teams hoist­ed ban­ners cel­e­brat­ing their play­ers in pub­lic spaces, the Nuggets’ reit­er­at­ed their two-fold mis­sion in Orlan­do: play bas­ket­ball and don’t let the spot­light fade on the social jus­tice movement.

“There’s a huge plat­form that our ath­letes have,” Nuggets pres­i­dent of bas­ket­ball oper­a­tions Tim Con­nel­ly told The Post. “We have to empow­er them to use it. Our country’s in a tough spot right now. We’re deal­ing with obvi­ous­ly a pan­dem­ic, some social issues that should’ve been addressed years and years and years ago. We want to make sure that the plat­form is effec­tive­ly uti­lized and that while we’re play­ing bas­ket­ball we can’t ignore what’s hap­pen­ing out­side of the bubble.”

The ban­ners are a small exam­ple of the Nuggets’ ini­tia­tive but there are plen­ty more. Twice Grant has ded­i­cat­ed his news con­fer­ences to the mem­o­ry of Bre­on­na Tay­lor. On numer­ous occa­sions, Mal­one has opened his news con­fer­ences by cit­ing a date from the Equal Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive Cal­en­dar, forc­ing both he and the media to con­front America’s racial history.

After cre­at­ing shirts that sought jus­tice for Eli­jah McClain, Mal­one told The Post last week how he con­nect­ed with Lawayne Mosley, McClain’s father, to fos­ter a rela­tion­ship with the heart­bro­ken fam­i­ly. And before the sea­son re-start­ed, the Nuggets held a vir­tu­al town­hall meet­ing with Den­ver may­or Michael Han­cock about work­ing in con­junc­tion with his office to estab­lish a forum for hon­est conversations.

Mari New­man, the lawyer for the McClain fam­i­ly, and a spokes­woman for the mayor’s office, were both blown away by the pas­sion and ener­gy Mal­one expressed. It was an indi­ca­tion how seri­ous­ly he takes this respon­si­bil­i­ty, and that the Nuggets’ invest­ment is not a false gesture.

“That’s why I feel hope­ful is that this moment, this time, it feels dif­fer­ent,” Mal­one told The Post. “It’s because the amount of peo­ple that are real­ly tak­ing time to invest in this. That’s the real key.”

Last week, the NBA’s Board of Gov­er­nors, in part­ner­ship with the NBPA, announced a $300 mil­lion com­mit­ment “ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing greater eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment in the Black com­mu­ni­ty,” the news release stat­ed. The focus, on both a nation­al and local lev­el, will be on skills train­ing, men­tor­ship and enhanc­ing job oppor­tu­ni­ties for Black men and women.

The nature of the Orlan­do bub­ble is such that dis­trac­tions are min­i­mized and life has almost strict­ly revolved around bas­ket­ball. With the way the Nuggets have han­dled their re-start, it’s evi­dent they have a dif­fer­ent goal in mind.