Chicago Bulls: What’s wrong with Lauri Markkanen?
What went wrong
The easy answer for Chicago Bulls fans in the case of Markkanen over the course of three seasons in his NBA career for his struggles is injury. Apparently Markkanen was playing with a sore oblique this season and he sat out down the stretch last season due to fatigue and endurance factors.
Jim Boylen said Lauri Markkanen is fighting through a sore oblique and has been dealing with it for 2 weeks. Yesterday was first time team disclosed it.
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) November 12, 2019
If injuries continue to hold back Markkanen each and every season, the Bulls are going to have to find a long term solution at the power forward position elsewhere. Markkanen isn’t holding up through an 82-game regular season, let alone if this Bulls team is able to make a playoff run anywhere in the near future.
A few years back when the idea of the “unicorn” mould for players that were seven-footers and could shoot threes really took off, Markkanen was one of the ideal NBA Draft prospects. Whenever he seems healthy and confident, his production soars through the roof. On the contrary, his starts to the last two regular seasons were riddled with injury. Even out of Training Camp last season, Markkanen missed roughly a month due to injury troubles.
Even something like a sore oblique can be enough to demolish the shooting rhythm and confidence of a seven-footer like Markkanen. This should be an outlier that Markkanen is hitting on roughly one-quarter of his three-point tries when he’s been at least a 35-40 percent shooter from that range throughout his college and NBA career.
Beyond the injury concerns, Markkanen isn’t very confident in his decision making at the moment. Averaging 2.1 assists per game and 2.3 turnovers indicates that he’s not in the right offensive framework and mindset.