Chicago Bulls: 3 reasons to keep Lauri Markkanen this offseason

2. Hard to find a player of his skill set

As I mentioned on the last part of the list, the Bulls should really consider the idea of seeing how it works with Markkanen and a different head coach next season. Current Bulls head coach Jim Boylen just isn’t getting it done on a number of levels. And Markkanen was one of the players on this team that suffered the most because of it.

For some reason, Boylen didn’t trust the rhythm shooter and scorer Markkanen with getting a high volume of shots from deep early in games. Markkanen should be getting in the double-digits for field goal attempts each game, without a doubt. He even had one less field goal attempt per game this season compared to his rookie campaign.

It took until around the halfway mark of the 2019-20 regular season for Markkanen to even reach a firm double-digit number of field goal attempts per game. And it just can’t be that five more players on the Bulls roster are taking more two-point field goal attempts per game in one season than Markkanen. While he is in the top three in total field goal attempts per game and three-point attempts, Markkanen needs to be one of the two players on this current roster taking the most per game on a regular basis.

Markkanen and LaVine are supposed to be the figureheads of this young core in the midst of the third year of the rebuild. But Boylen wasn’t allowing them to play off of each other like they did when they found more success in the second half of last season.

Moreover, Markkanen was starting to get hotter before that pelvic injury and sprained ankle started to hamper him in January and caused him to miss all of February. He had a true shooting percentage around 65.0 in December and a 118 offensive rating. Markkanen followed that up with a solid 110 offensive rating in January.

Markkanen’s improving play got cut short before he could really get fully comfortable. This is yet another reason to give him once more chance.