Kansas forward Cheick Diallo (13) looks for an outlet as he is defended by UC Irvine forward Brandon Smith (13) and center Mamadou Ndiaye (34) during the second half, Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2015 at Allen Fieldhouse.

Nobody ever asks why Kansas City Royals star center fielder Lorenzo Cain didn’t become a major league regular until the age of 26, yet so many seem puzzled that Cheick Diallo watches the nation’s top-ranked college basketball team play far more than he plays.

It was understood with Cain. He came late to baseball after getting cut from the freshman basketball team. He had all the physical tools, but it took him longer for instincts to bring out those skills because he didn’t start playing the sport until his sophomore year of high school.

Now look at him. An All-Star, he bats third for the World Series champions and covers acres in center field.

For some reason, few afford the same degree of patience to McDonald’s All-American basketball players, even those who came to the game later than most.

Diallo watched 50 minutes and played five in KU’s 109-106, triple-overtime victory against Oklahoma. That he played at all in a game against such an experienced, talented team was somewhat of a surprise, given how raw his game is at this stage.

A suggestion for those who don’t understand why he doesn’t play more minutes: Watch what Landen Lucas and Jamari Traylor do after setting picks. They roll to the hoop, where they either become scoring threats or are in position to attack the glass. Diallo routinely pops to the perimeter, playing right into the hands of the defense. The defense abandons Diallo and four defenders guard the other three KU players who don’t have the ball. The ball ends up in Diallo’s hands 20 feet from the hoop, where he lacks the passing skills to make a play and doesn’t quite have the range for a shot to be the smart play either. The offense grinds to a halt. Too often, what KU does best on offense, moving the ball faster than the defense can keep up until it winds up in the hands of an open man, becomes what the team does worst when he’s on the floor.

Defensively, lending quick, decisive help makes Bill Self-coached teams stand out. Diallo lacks the instincts to leave his man and lend help because it’s something he never had been asked to do or shown how to do before coming to college. Note that open dunks from opponents in the halfcourt tend to come when Diallo is on the floor. Ditto for guards finishing at the hoop.

Whereas most freshmen are learning the nuances of playing college basketball, Diallo has to get the basics down first before advancing to the subtleties.

“Without getting into a lot of detail, we could go into a lot of detail, but if you’re guarding a big guy that’s not a real perimeter threat, somebody else is guarding (Oklahoma’s Jordan) Woodard, he’s a great driver, you’re in extra strong help to make sure you discourage the drive and make him throw it to your man. Sometimes we think, ‘I’m going to guard my man. My man is not going to score.’ The way you look at it, ‘My man didn’t score.’ Well, he really did because we weren’t in the right position.”

At some point in our evolution toward becoming the instant-gratification culture that we are today, many adopted the belief that players can only improve and learn in games, when the truth is they spend far more time in learning mode in practice. Coaches can stop the action to explain things, but don’t have that luxury in games. Sure game action helps, but a coach knowing when players are ready to take on more is part of putting them in position to maximize their potential.

Plus, coaches play combinations that help them win games.

“I told him the other night, and I mean this: I’d love for him to play a lot,” Self said of Diallo. “The other night, there was no doubt that Jamari and Landen gave us a chance to win the game. It’s hard to put freshmen that really don’t have any experience in any real big games or anything like that, put them in the game when you’re down 10 to the No. 1 ranked team in the country at home. You don’t say, ‘Go win the game for us, you’ve never been here, go do that.’ … Cheick’s just very young. Basketball-wise he’s very, very, very young. He’s going to be a terrific player. Nobody has ever doubted that.”

Diallo has a long reach, runs extremely fast, hustles, is a quick jumper and has a soft shooting touch. Those qualities all bode well for his future, just as Cain’s tools did.

“Kids that go to kindergarten, they go to preschool first,” Self said. “Kids that go to first grade go to kindergarten first. You’re asking him to go right into third grade from a basketball experience standpoint.”

Joel Embiid was wired for basketball brilliance. He was a pre-schooler ready for advanced calculus, a rare exception. Diallo is more typical. I fear some might be holding Diallo to Embiid’s standard. Embiid caught the ball on the block, spun away from the defense and scored an easy bucket. In a recent game, Diallo caught it near the block, dribbled out to the perimeter and shot a fade-away jumper.

As Self put it, Diallo needs to progress to the point he can “understand the game and have better feel,” and added, “It doesn’t have anything to do with intellect. It doesn’t have anything to do with that at all. It just has something to do with him just being raw from a basketball standpoint. It’s going to happen.”

Such development is not as predictable as reading the instructions on a box and shoving it into the microwave for a set amount of time.

“He’s got to be patient,” Self said. “We’ve got to be patient, too. If we’re not patient, he’s not patient, it does nothing but slow the process down a little bit.”

Mock drafts, based so heavily on where players are ranked coming out of high school and so little on reality, make patience on the part of athletes, handlers and fans, more difficult to exercise.

At least one website seems clued into Diallo, who by the way is 6-foot-9, not 7-foot-2, needing far more seasoning. NBAdraft.net has him slotted at No. 46, behind 15 freshmen. Leaving for the uncertainty of second-round status for a player so raw would practically equate to career suicide.

“I love the kid,” Self reiterated Thursday. “Nobody was happier after the game than him that we won.”

Patience is the only sane prescription for Diallo to one day go from being happy at the accomplishments of teammates to being the one making teammates happy with his play.