Three points.
Three.
A 1-for-9 shooting night from the field, the only starter that wasn’t on the positive side for plus-minus, and a bystander from the bench while Zach LaVine was playing hero in the final seconds against the Hornets.
This is the other pillar that the Bulls are counting on in Year 3 of the rebuild.
This is the regression of Lauri Markkanen.
“Well I didn’t think Lauri played poorly,’’ coach Jim Boylen tried to say after the 116-115 improbable comeback win. “He did not shoot the ball how we know he can shoot it. I did not think he played poorly. Just like Zach, just like Coby [White], just like KD [Kris Dunn], just like Arch [Ryan Arcidiacono], just like everybody, Wendell [Carter], I’m going to keep coaching and my staff is going to keep coaching. Just try and keep leading these guys in the right direction. We’re going to keep looking at it.’’
That’s fine.
But besides the mentioning of LaVine, Markkanen is not supposed to be under the comparison umbrella with the Whites and Dunns.
He is supposed to be special.
A 7-foot unicorn who can score from anywhere on the floor, grab double-digit rebounds, and is versatile enough to bring the ball the length of the court and attack the rim.
For the third game this season, however, Markkanen was basically unusable when it mattered most.
In the 47-point fourth quarter, the third-year big man played 1:13. Sure, Boylen got Markkanen up to the table once, set to put him back in, but LaVine was putting on a scoring clinic, while Arcidiacono, White, and Tomas Satoransky were all playing Robin to LaVine’s Batman.
“I had Lauri at the table and then we had a timeout, and we just made a three,’’ Boylen said. “I just didn’t think [putting Markkanen] in was the right thing to do. Lauri didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t an issue. It was that group was rolling. I’ve kind of done this before, and you go with your gut, go with a feel, and I thought … you know we were kind of giving up some twos in the post, but because of our small lineup we were getting threes on the other end.
“So we were trading twos for threes, kind of hanging around, hanging around, and we kept doing it, caught a couple breaks in the end.’’
And just like that it’s once again painfully obvious that the 24-point game against Detroit back on Wednesday for Markkanen wasn’t exactly the jumpstart to the season the Finn was hoping for.
An even bigger concern, LaVine and Markkanen are still showing an inability to play off each other, and this is going back to last season. No one knows why, including Markkanen.
“It’s pretty easy to play with him,’’ Markkanen said of LaVine. “We just have to do it more consistently.’’
Hopefully soon.
The win over Charlotte was a couple ice cubes thrown on a season that has been more dumpster fire of dysfunction than promising rebuild. If LaVine and Markkanen can’t figure it out, one may very well have to go. That’s why there are rumors of Markkanen being traded, despite a source in the organization saying that scenario is completely false.
What is true? One of the players that the Bulls have built the roster around has to be more than a warm-up model on the bench come crunch-time. Markkanen can’t become just another guy on the roster.
“Yeah, I understand, I understand, and I do think he is special, and I’m going to keep coaching him that way,’’ Boylen said. “I’m confident he’ll respond.’’
