Piatkowski’s Playing Time to Increase

One man’s bench time is another man’s playing time.

When forward Lamar Odom was removed from the Clippers’ starting lineup Wednesday night by Coach Alvin Gentry for missing a team practice, he was replaced by Eric Piatkowski.

Piatkowski made the most of his opportunity. The swingman made nine of 18 shots from the field and finished with a season-high 30 points in 50 minutes in his team’s 114-110 overtime loss to the Seattle SuperSonics.

Did Piatkowski impress Gentry enough to earn additional starts?

“We might start him some,” said Gentry, obviously intrigued by the idea. “We know he can score if we get him the shots.”

Will Piatkowski start Saturday night against the Sacramento Kings?

“That could be a possibility,” Gentry said.

Translation: Piatkowski is not about to replace Odom, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, but look for Piatkowski to get sporadic starts, including perhaps Saturday, and increased playing time.

Nobody ever doubted that Piatkowski could score. His 1,934 career points at Nebraska are the second most in school history behind the 2,167 scored by former NBA center Dave Hoppen.

In his seven previous seasons with the Clippers, Piatkowski averaged 7.9 points in 18.5 minutes a game. Projected over a full 48 minutes, that would give Piatkowski a scoring average of 21 a game. Entering Wednesday’s game, Piatkowski was averaging 8.9 points in 21.6 minutes.

If there were questions about Piatkowski, it was about his defensive skills, ballhandling and all-around game. He thinks, however, that, at age 30, he has answered those questions.

“When you are young,” he said, “all you think about is scoring. You shoot a lot because you think you need to do that. When you get older, you get more secure. I don’t need to score so much now. If the shots are there, I’ll make them, but I also take a lot of pride in the little things, setting picks, making good passes, going in and getting rebounds.”

Defense, he acknowledged, came slowly.

“In high school, no one plays defense,” Piatkowski said. “In college, you play a lot of zones and not all the players are good. But at this level, you have to play one-on-one and you don’t get a lot of help. If you don’t do the job, you can get embarrassed, look bad and lose playing time.

“All the fans care about is who gets the dunks and who scores the points, but the coaches see the little things. You want them to have faith that when they put you out there, you’ll do everything they need.”

Clipper faith in Piatkowski has never been stronger.

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Center Michael Olowokandi has a sprained ankle and guard Quentin Richardson is suffering from a bruised toe, but both are expected to play Saturday.