About that nagging production gap between where Bulls 7-footer Lauri Markkanen was expected to be in Year 3 and where he actually is:
Come on, it’s hardly anything.
That’s how coach Jim Boylen made it sound, anyway, before Tuesday’s game against the Knicks at the United Center.
Markkanen’s scoring is down to 14.9 points per game, about four points shy of where he was last season. His 27.9 percent shooting from the three-point line has been a glaring part of the problem, and his 12.2 shot attempts (threes and twos) per game is lower than it was when he was a rookie.
“Is it a matter of him making one more layup than he has in a game and one more three?” Boylen said. “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation. It would be five more points on his average, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
But why stop there? Toss in another couple of made threes per game, and the 22-year-old Finn would almost be cracking the league’s top 10 in scoring. Heck, he might be an All-Star.
Back on Planet Earth, Markkanen is failing to follow up his outstanding performance in Game 1 of the season — 35 points and 17 rebounds in a loss at Charlotte — with anything close to an approximation of it.
Over the nine games since then, heading into the Knicks contest, his highs in points and rebounds were 18 and 11, respectively.
“I can play a lot better than I’ve been playing,” Markkanen said. “First of all, I’ve got to look at myself in the mirror. What can I do better? We’ve got a lot of guys this year [who] can score the ball, so it might be a different guy every night.”
Less than a week ago, Markkanen made a similar comment about needing to “look in the mirror.” He followed that up with a relative no-show in a blowout loss to the Rockets at home.
Maybe he just hasn’t found the right mirror? Or needs a bigger one?
Or could it be that he’s hurt? Or hurt-ish?
Boylen tried to give Markkanen a little cover on the injury front, pointing to a “sore oblique” that has dogged the player for a couple of weeks.
“If you’ve ever had one of those, it’s just a weird injury,” Boylen said. “It’s not enough to keep you out; it’s not enough to kind of stop your momentum. But it’s enough to maybe influence maybe how you do things and how you play, and he’s fought through it and I’m really proud of him.”
Yet it’s not enough to land Markkanen on the daily injury report, even as a “probable”? There wasn’t a peep about this through the team’s first 10 games.
The Bulls’ 2017 first-round pick soldiers on.
“We need Lauri Markkanen to be Lauri Markkanen,” Boylen said. “We need him to be a driver, a handler, a defensive rebounder. We need him to be the multifaceted, multidimensional 7-foot guy that we’ve seen him play like, that we know he can play like. We need him to play like that more consistently. He knows it. We know it. He has high character and it’s just a matter of time to me.”
Markkanen acknowledges that his engagement level on the offensive end has been “varying.” He knows he needs to put the ball on the floor more and be aggressive going to the basket. He’d like to do a better job of reading defenses, especially on closeouts.
A shot? Or a shot-fake and a drive? In Year 3, a player as skilled as Markkanen probably ought to be displaying a better feel.
“I know I can play better,” he said. “Maybe our record would be a little bit better if we [all] played at our own level.”
