When the Sixers open the season in Boston on Oct. 28, don’t expect Jahlil Okafor to be 100 percent, says coach Brett Brown.
The rookie is going to need some time to get into top NBA playing shape, according to the coach.
“He has been tremendously set back now,” Brown said after Wednesday’s practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Okafor has been dealing with a sore knee that kept him out of practice on Tuesday and Wednesday and forced him to sit out of Monday’s game at Madison Square Garden. However, Okafor said he isn’t injured and is simply “doing what I’m told.”
Though he is working out on his own, the Sixers are staying true to course and are being extra cautious with the rookie center.
So not to set the expectations high, Brown and the team’s training staff have allowed Okafor 17 to 21 minutes in the first three preseason games and if he plays on Friday night, it likely will be for just 12 to 15 minutes.
If at all.
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It seems as if Okafor will be on a minutes limit when the season opens, too.
“It's not fair to him, it's not fair to put him in that situation,” Brown said about pushing Okafor’s minutes when the season begins. “The end game, I hope, will be about 32 minutes [per game], maybe even more. But it's really based on his fitness. He has no right to come out and be fit right from this injury. So I have to be smart with the minutes I give him. That is the end game that I hope to get to, 32 minutes.”
Brown says he plans on monitoring Okafor in practice and games before extending his minutes. In order to get the optimum amount of playing time, the big man is going to have to build up and prove he can do it.
Brown has a formula.
“It’s going to be based on if you can go hard for four eight-minute stretches,” he said. “If you can go for four eights, then that's a good thing.”
It makes one wonder if Okafor would have been ready to clock major minutes right out of the gate before the non-injury. Brown said Okafor arrived at training camp at Stockton University in good shape, but that would be asking a lot from a 19-year-old rookie center.
“He arrived good,” Brown said of Okafor, who reported that he had 268 pounds on his 6-foot-11 frame. “I feel like the knowledge of what great is going to be is the education that we have to help him and teach him. He’s been tremendously set back now. He was moving, he was going to be fine, going through Stockton, he was good. So we’re looking for great and that will equate to 32 minutes.”
When the season begins, Brown says it won’t take long for Okafor to reach a top level of fitness.
“I think that his fitness is not that far away in regards of we know how to do it, but because he hasn’t played, it’s just not at a stage right now where we can talk about that volume of minutes,” Brown said.
In the meantime, the Sixers will be extra cautious with Okafor. On Tuesday the big man worked out by doing extra cardio work on the bike as well as a swimming pool where the pounding on his joints will be minimal. When asked, Okafor reported that he is in good shape.
But as far as being in top shape to be cut loose in the NBA, the Sixers are pulling back on the reins a bit.