The Philadelphia 76ers have not had much work for them this season as they are now 0-13 and head coach Brett Brown is still looking for answers. For the most part Brown has started Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel together in the frontcourt but that combination has been a little underwhelming so far so in Friday's loss to the Charlotte Hornets Noel came off the bench and now Brown is considering moving Okafor to power forward and Noel to center, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Okafor has been the 76ers best player this season and is having a nice start to his NBA career but Brown believes his skillset might be best used at the power forward position. Okafor can play with his back to the basket but he is also a very mobile big man that can face up and hit a mid-range jumper. Moving Okafor to power forward would also allow Noel to go back to the center position where he was much more effective last season.
Noel's move to power forward this season has not gone great so far as he has not been protecting the rim like he did a year ago and he has also not improved from outside the paint. Noel is shooting just 43 percent from the field and a miserable 23 percent from outside of three feet so naturally the 76ers want to get him more looks closer to the basket. For all of those reasons this position change makes a lot of sense.
"When you have this new group and you're trying to let those two guys co-exist, there's a lot of moving parts that we can learn from. It's a challenge, but that's my job," said Brown.
Coming into Friday's game Okafor and Noel had played about 21 minutes together per game but they played just 11 minutes together against the Hornets. These two definitely have the ability to co-exist and although it hasn't worked out great yet this position change might be what it takes to get them to work better together. Brown hasn't given any indication as to whether Noel will be back in the starting lineup for their next game but he likely won't be coming off the bench for too much longer as he and Okafor are big pieces of the future and they need to figure out how to play with one another.
