Chicago Bulls: Realistic expectations for Markkanen’s return

It’s exciting that Chicago Bulls forward Lauri Markkanen is expected to return to the court tonight, but it’s important to keep expectations in check.

Chicago Bulls forward Lauri Markkanen has missed 23 regular season games to date due to an elbow injury that he suffered in late September. According to Shams Charania, Lauri is expected to make his season debut tonight against Houston. The Bulls have been suffering mightily in Markkanen’s absence. The team currently holds a 5-18 record.

The Bulls have been immensely impaired this season, missing Markkanen, Kris Dunn, Bobby Portis, and Denzel Valentine. For a team that is hard on wins and needs a bit of a spark, people might be expecting Markkanen to be a savior for this lackluster Chicago Bulls team.

Over the offseason, Lauri gained 15 pounds of muscle to offer more mass along with his 7’0″ stature and many people have been hopeful of the Bulls future, acclaiming Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter Jr. to be the frontcourt of the future.

Fans are extremely frustrated with the Bulls current gameplay and record and may impose their impatience on Lauri. However, we should not expect huge strides in progress upon Markkanen’s initial return.

It may be time to pump the breaks for a second before we start getting nostalgic of Lauri’s rookie season where he played outstanding, averaging 15.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game.

We must keep in mind that Markkanen has not played in over a quarter of the regular season and is coming off a semi-serious injury.

There is a chance he will come back rusty and his shot may be off (he injured his elbow on his shooting arm), or he may not be up to game speed from missing the early part of the season.

I expect Bulls coach, Fred Hoiberg, to ease Lauri into the lineup slowly to get him well adjusted to the regular season feel, similar to the way he allowed Wendell Carter Jr. to get his feet wet early in the season by playing him with the first unit.

Mixing LaVine, Parker, and Markkanen

While Lauri has been out, Zach LaVine has risen and proven himself to be the star on offense for this Bulls club and we must remember that Lauri had his excellent rookie year primarily while Zach was out with an ACL injury.

Jabari Parker has been playing well as of late, too. For the season he averages a bit over 16 points and 7 rebounds per game. Jabari is also in a contract year where he will have to prove himself in order to stay on this Bulls roster for upcoming seasons.

There is a chance with Zach and Jabari getting many of the shots that there may not be as many opportunities for Markkanen and he may need to score based on the flow of the game, outside of being a direct target.

Also, another aspect to keep in mind is that Lauri might get injured again after returning. It happens very often where players return from injury and get injured again or after their injury, some players never get back to the level of success they had in the past.

It will be hard to estimate Markkanen’s level of success after returning from his injury because there are so many variables, but overall we should be patient and wait for his growth. We should wait until he plays at least 10-15 games before we begin to be critical of his potential.