Chicago Bulls: 3 Reasons Lauri Markkanen will not be returning next year

Reason No.1 the Chicago Bulls won’t be retaining Lauri Markkanen: The Decision to Acquire Nikola Vucevic

The move that sealed the deal on the future of Lauri Markkanen was made at this year’s trade deadline. The Bulls got their number two scorer to play alongside LaVine and the writing was on the wall for Markkanen and his career as a Bull.

The two big men simply do not fit alongside one another on the basketball court. Vooch is the obviously and easily better player of the two and makes bringing back Markkanen nearly impossible even if the team really wanted to.

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Markkanen’s greatest strength is shooting, something Vooch does better than him anyway. Add in the number of other ways Vucevic impacts the game offensively and the comparison is nonexistent.

Neither is anything to get excited about defensively. In fact, they are both liabilities on that end. It is that truth that makes playing them alongside one another extremely hard to do.

Sure, it can work against a few teams and on random occasions. The strong majority of the time it will be taken advantage of by opponents and put the Bulls in a hole they have to climb out of.

When the decision was made to bring in Vucevic to play with LaVine, a lot of things became very clear moving forward. One of those things was that the roster, and specifically starting unit, would need to be adjusted to fit the two all-stars.

Defense is needed from all other positions, but especially in the frontcourt. Vucevic can be exploited by opposing bigs and is not a rim protector. The Bulls need someone that is at least competent at one of those things to avoid being a terrible defensive team moving forward.