Chicago Bulls: What’s wrong with Lauri Markkanen?

Possibly the most frustrating start for any Chicago Bulls player so far this season is with power forward Lauri Markkanen.

We’re now 11 games into the 2019-20 regular season for the Chicago Bulls, and there’s not more than one game that third-year power forward Lauri Markkanen came away impressive. And that was in the regular season opener, which resulted in a bad loss on the road to the Charlotte Hornets. Markkanen did register 35 points and 17 rebounds in that game. Since then, he’s averaged less than 14 points per game and is shooting well under 28 percent from range.

A player that needed to make the proper strides this season for the Bulls rebuild to take another step forward, Markkanen needed to be big. And he’s been anything but that so far. He, along with most of the Bulls players, haven’t been started off on the right foot through almost the first dozen games.

In fact, most of the successes of the Bulls frontcourt rotation thus far are thanks to second-year center Wendell Carter Jr. In yet another quality outing for the Bulls against the New York Knicks in a 120-102 revenge win, Carter Jr. racked up 17 points and 12 rebounds.

You could argue that Carter Jr. is about the lone consistent bright spot for the Bulls so far this season. The young core just didn’t do a whole lot to help the cause to get on the right side of the win column.

Here’s a deeper look into how the Chicago Bulls have fared so far with a down start from Lauri Markkanen through 11 games and how it can get better from here on out.