Brett Brown: Playing big with Noel and Okafor 'a tremendous challenge'
The Sixers selected Jahlil Okafor in this summer's draft because they believed he was the best player left on the board, not because he was necessarily a fit with the talent already in place on the roster.
Philadelphia already had a defensive-oriented big man in Nerlens Noel coming off of a strong rookie season, and a potential star big man in Joel Embiid who will need plenty of minutes to develop once he's healthy, even though that might not be until next season.
Okafor has been great early on with the Sixers, but head coach Brett Brown still believes that it's going to be a challenge pairing him with Noel successfully over the course of their respective careers.
“I did a lot of studying over the summer revisiting those (San Antonio) Spur days with (Tim) Duncan and (David) Robinson,” Brown said. “We’ve studied a lot of people and different teams lately like Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. There are teams recently that played big ball. I still think it’s going to be a tremendous challenge. Nobody’s saying that we’re convinced that it’s going to be pretty right from the start. There will be times that you’re going to see Nerlens go straight back to that five spot when Jah goes off the floor.”
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How about substituting Noel and Okafor?
“It’s a little bit a juggling act on how you’re going to sub it,” Brown said. “I think that minutes played for Jahlil — he’s going to have to play 30-plus minutes. Nerlens is going to have to play 30-plus minutes. So, there’s going to be a portion of Jahlil’s minutes that make that five spot available. There are minutes to be had at the five spot. We all know that Nerlens is very capable at the rim blocking shots.”