How quickly do you believe Okongwu will be given significant (20+) minutes?

[_s_t_u_r_t_]

It will be interesting to see now that the tanking phase is explicitly understood as past history whether King Kong will get significant minutes at some point, and if so, when. Given that Capela, Collins and Gallo almost certainly will absorb most of the sum total 96 minutes at the 4 and 5 until/unless one is injured (*knocks on wood*), it's a viable question.

Up until now, it was just an innate thing--rookies had to play, and it was by design. Many head coaches, though, in a playoff-goal paradigm purposely attempt to bring a rookie along slowly--Budenholzer being one of those, of course. I recall it seeming that Prince and Schroder were predestined to end-of-the-bench status for the first half of their rookie seasons, and even after that, never in the game for any crucial minutes until maybe late in the season when playoff seeding was more or less settled.

No real way to have an educated guess as to how Pierce will approach it, right?

[hawks_fan25]

I'm not expecting a lot of minutes from him this year. I think he'll have some games where Cap or Gallo rest where he sees a good amount of run, but not on average.

I'm also guessing that if we're not playing well then Cap is a likely trade candidate to a contender at the deadline. If that happens, obviously OO will get a good amount of playing time, but we'd also be throwing in the towel on the season.

[Spud2nique]

He is one of the most grinding and prolific big men to enter the league in a while. Despite everyone being down on this draft, he’s the exception, well him and a few others. Not sure where’s he’s at with his toe or anything but if he’s healthy, he’s gonna be damn near impossible to keep off the floor. He should be pushing for minutes right off the bat. He does the little things on D that show up in terms of wins and losses for the team. He’s a winner.

[graymule]

There is a difference in playing in the NBA. OO appears to have all the right stuff to be a good player. We waited and waited for Capela to get well so we could see him in action. That turned out well. The wait was worth it! Now, we wait on OO.