Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel: Can Brett Brown make it work?

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Though No. 3 overall draft pick Jahlil Okafor and second-year power forward (to be) Nerlens Noel have never played five-on-five together, preparations are being made.

Noel, who played center for most of the 2014-15 season, is preparing to take his defensive prowess a bit farther from the basket as a power forward. Though he is a superior rim protector, Noel has been at work guarding players away from the basket.

And that’s not all.

Noel also has been honing his outside shot, something he only dabbled with during his rookie season when coach Brett Brown began using the big man in pick-and-roll situations. Holed up in Newport, Rhode Island, where he’s been working out under the radar, Noel, Brown says, is hoping to transform his game to be similar to that of future Hall of Famer, Kevin Garnett.

Really?

“Nerlens desperately wants to be like KG,” Brown said during an interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio.

“He’s spent a lot of time, you know, trying to develop that pick-and-pop, 18-foot jump-shot game, 20-foot jump-shot game. We are going to give him the freedom to shoot that shot, also.”

Nevertheless, the enhancements are being made to accommodate Okafor, a throwback-style big man who is the odds-on favorite to win the Rookie of the Year Award.

Perhaps next season the Sixers will have to make even more retooling when big man Joel Embiid is finally cleared to play. In the meantime, much is being considered for infusing Okafor into the lineup and that especially is the case for Brown. And, Okafor is such an otherworldly NBA talent that Brown said Wednesday during a media luncheon that he will turn over the paint to the rookie.

In fact, Brown said he anticipates playing Okafor for upwards of 35 minutes per game.

“Probably the most excited I got about [Okafor] was when I talked to [Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski] after we drafted him,” Brown said. “I had done my homework with people outside of Coach K and the big thing was everyone said he was a terrific human being. When I had him in the office with his father after we drafted him, I saw that he was wired right and he thinks well. He’s a great person.

“And then you see what he can do on the basketball court, and I believe Coach K has gone on record saying and the scouts all brought it up when we drafted him, he is the best low-post player in the history of Duke basketball.”

But just dropping Okafor into the mix with Noel isn’t going to be easy. That’s why Brown spent a lot of time studying ways in which he can best use the two big men on the court at the same time.

“I did a lot of study over the summer, going back to those Spurs days with [Tim] Duncan and [David] Robinson,” Brown said. “We’ve studied a lot of people with different teams, like Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. There are teams recently that play big-big ball. I still think it’s going to be a tremendous challenge.”

That challenge will be getting Okafor and Noel to mesh. Okafor will mostly be stationed under the basket to the elbow, with Noel getting the chance to float from the top of the key on down.

But that doesn’t mean both players won’t be on the low blocks together, either. In fact, when Okafor is out of the game, Noel likely will play center.

“Any team that has a couple of bigs, you see that they have a great understanding of how they play together. There’s a relationship,” Brown explained. “So we will have some situations where there is some high-low and there will be some where we call, ‘a double’ where they both play with their backs to the basket. What we won’t do is just chuck it up there and let them go get it.”

So indeed, there will be a method to the madness with Noel and Okafor on the floor, though Brown says there will be a learning curve. Eventually, or ideally, Embiid will step into the mix, which gives the Sixers something of a young, big man version of the Phillies’ five aces pitching staff a few years back.

The difference will be all of the big men, ideally, will be on the floor at the same time.

“No one is saying that we’re convinced it’s going to be pretty right from the start,” Brown said. “Even though Jahlil is a hell of a low-post target, we still want to play with tremendous pace. We still want to get up and down the floor.”

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