Chicago Bulls: 5 Potential offseason replacements for Lauri Markkanen

It’s become quite clear the Chicago Bulls will not be retaining forward Lauri Markkanen during the upcoming offseason. The seventh overall selection in the 2017 NBA Draft will be moving on to a new team where he will hopefully be able to thrive and grow in a way he no longer can with the Bulls.

With that being said, he will need to be replaced on the Bulls roster. Although he has disappointed this season, he has had a role and brings a skill set that has made him an important piece of the Bulls rotation this season.

Replacing him won’t be easy but will be wise as opposed to bringing him back at the contract he is expected to demand on the free-agent market this offseason. If teams are already interested in the Bulls big man, only more will be when free agency rolls around.

While matching his outside shooting ability in a replacement may be impossible, the Bulls can still replace him with a good shooter that does other things that the fourth-year forward does not. They can also do so at a cheaper price, leaving more money available for other areas of need.

That will be crucial for a team that has a multitude of holes to fill with the cap space they will have available. When Arturas Karnisovas made the decision to acquire Nikola Vucevic at the NBA trade deadline, this is the situation he put his team in.

That does not make it a bad situation. Many teams around the league would love to have two proven all-stars to build around. What it does require, though, is creativity in filling out the roster around those two.

A number of routes are expected to be explored in filling the holes on the team. The main one will obviously be free agency. These five players make sense as early targets to replace Lauri Markkanen on the team as a stretch big that can play alongside someone like Vooch, and most are capable of doing so more effectively than Markkanen at this point in his career.