How many minutes will Brook Lopez play? And how will he perform when he plays them? The answers to those questions will go a long way toward defining Brooklyn’s season.

The Nets — who play their home opener Friday versus Indiana — have put all their players on minutes restrictions. But the limits to Lopez — and his struggles with the 3-pointer-happy, motion offense — will draw the most attention as long as they persist.

“It’s like a slow, steady climb. And you’ll see him go up. I do know for him it could be a little frustrating. But when we sit down and talk about it, he completely understands. So I’d say it’s a well-thought-out plan,’’ coach Kenny Atkinson said.

“[It’s] with our whole roster. With each guy we’ve developed a plan for the season. … We have a plan for Brook to build him up as the season goes on. I think the build-up will be pretty quick. But we’re all on board with this, thinking about the long-term health for all of our guys. So we’re all on the same page.”

Lopez built from 13 minutes in each of his first two preseason appearances, to 19 in his next two, and 21 in the finale. Ten Nets got more minutes in the preseason, and eight got more than the 21:12 Lopez was limited to in Wednesday’s season-opening loss in Boston, even starting the second half on the bench in favor of Luis Scola.

“It’s absolutely [getting in sync], and looking at my future in general is another thing, another benefit, being able to play for a longer time,’’ said Lopez. “We do have a schedule and timetable. … We had a couple meetings, so we talked about it. It’s something we absolutely went over and I was aware of.”

Still, Lopez played fewer minutes than Bojan Bogdanovic (busy Olympic summer) and barely more than Greivis Vasquez (season-ending surgery last Dec. 15). In his case, this is as much about trying to shoehorn their best player into a 3-reliant offense that frankly is an ill fit.

“It’s a learning process. It’s both of us: It’s him learning a totally new system and us integrating him into a new system,’’ Atkinson said. “But I have complete confidence that as the season goes on, you’re going to see a better Brook. He’s going to understand it more.

“We had a great dialogue [Thursday], just talking about patience and we’re going to build this thing and we’re going to find a way to get you involved more, but in the confines of the system. I’ve seen it, so I know there are a lot of ways. It’s in the post, it’s at the elbow, it’s for a corner 3. It’s a nice utopia with him. It’s a nice balance of all of them.”

More purgatory than utopia. After being the top-scoring center in the East last season (20.6 points per game), Lopez averaged 8.0 ppg on 39.5 percent shooting in the preseason and had just seven points on 1 of 7 shooting in the opener.

Jeremy Lin, who Atkinson has said needs to get into point-guard mode after playing last season off the ball in Charlotte, had just three assists Wednesday and shouldered some of the blame.

“I need to be better at getting Brook in the spots that he likes, and we’re in communication about that,’’ Lin said. “I’m going to keep trying to make his life easy, make his job easy.”

The Nets have to figure a way to best utilize Lopez in an up-tempo motion offense short on called post-up plays and that heaved up a team-record 44 shots from deep Wednesday.

“We’ve got a pretty good low-post scorer in Brook,’’ forward Trevor Booker said. “So to get him a couple of touches down low would probably open some things up.”