Lauri Markkanen was openly disappointed a deal on an extension didn’t get done by the Monday deadline, but it wasn’t like the Bulls forward needed to be talked off a ledge in the wake of it.
One less pile of food on an already crowded Billy Donovan plate.
“I mean, obviously disappointing, I wanted to get a deal done, but that happened, and we’re moving on and I’m 100 percent committed to this team and we keep moving forward and we’ll see what happens,’’ Markkanen said in a Tuesday Zoom call. “It’s another motivation for me. Obviously it’s not the main thing, but obviously it fuels my fire to play even harder and do what this team needs me to do.
“Obviously I didn’t play up to my abilities last year in my opinion, so that’s the main thing and I think we’re moving in the right direction with the team right now and that’s my main focus.’’
Donovan’s focus with Markkanen? Making sure he wasn’t mentally in a rut now that he is headed for restricted free agency next offseason.
“Yeah, I spoke to Lauri probably when we were in Oklahoma and just wanted to make sure he was doing OK,’’ Donovan said. “As I mentioned around that time, those conversations between his agent and [executive vice president of basketball operations] Arturas [Karnisovas] and [general manager] Marc [Eversley] are between them. But I just wanted to make sure he was in a good space mentally in terms of going out there and playing. He seems like he is. He seems to be doing well. He’s working hard. He’s been totally engaged. I feel good about that part of it.
“I think the negotiation part is not something I was really privy to or involved with in terms of what those conversations were like, which is the way it should be.’’
The way Donovan sees it, Markkanen is healthy and ready to be one of his likely starters when the 2020-21 season opens up for the Bulls Wednesday night at the United Center. Considering all Donovan has had to deal with since camp started just over three weeks ago, that’s not something he can take for granted.
The Bulls have had several players turn up positive with the coronavirus, and then had the likes of Tomas Satoransky quarantined because of contact tracing.
Satoransky was back to practice on Tuesday, and the hope was to get him a few minutes against the Hawks.
“It was obviously tough for me because you are practicing and working hard for eight months and then this happens to you,’’ Satoransky said. “I’m just one of the players who is probably going to have to go through this and I’m glad it was just preseason.’’
Besides players in the league’s protocol, Donovan had veteran Thad Young sidelined with MRSA, Denzel Valentine sidelined much of the camp with a hamstring, and a team that is far from being conditioned because of the short camp.
All of this for a team that won 22 games last season, and has a core that still doesn’t understand how to consistently play winning basketball.
Year 6 in the NBA for Donovan, and he might be facing his toughest test.
“We’re going to have to have a lot of resiliency, we’re going to have to handle adversity, we’re going to have to handle the ups and downs, we’re going to have to maintain a level of competitiveness when things are not going our way, we’re going to have to have a fight as a team,’’ Donovan said, when asked about what lies in front of this team in order to be successful. “Those are the things we’ve talked quite a bit about, especially only having the opportunity to play against Houston twice and Oklahoma City twice, where you get a little bit of a body of work where you can see in some areas you fell short.
“So much of the NBA is putting the ball in the basket, but I do think there are a lot of things you can control that do impact winning and impacts your team, and if we’re not making shots or struggling to score or having a difficult time offensive – you know we’ve turned it over a lot – do we have the mental fortitude and the toughness to grind out loose balls, offensive rebounds, getting back in transition, getting stops, trying to get easy baskets in transition? We’re going to have to play like that and do a lot of those things to keep ourselves really, really competitive, and I think as a group that’s the challenge for us.’’
