1 stud, 1 dud in Cavs dispiriting loss to short-handed Bulls

1 stud from Cavs loss to Bulls: Lauri Markkanen

Lauri Markkanen‘s best skill is his ability to shoot efficiently and prolifically from outside, and even while the Cavs have been surging this year his shot has come and gone. For the season he has shot just 33.5 percent from deep, running hot or cold on a game-to-game basis.

Wednesday night was a hot shooting night, as Markkanen hit nine of his 14 shots en route to a team-high 28 points, including 5-of-9 from deep. He hit multiple shots off of movement, serving as that necessary floor-spacer to open up the interior for Garland and Mobley.

He wasn’t just a shooter, however, cutting hard into the paint on multiple occasions to score into the rim. His teammates did a great job of finding him on those cuts, and he was a solid 4-of-5 inside the arc including one thunderous dunk. Even more impressively, he racked up six foul shots, shooting 5-of-6 from the stripe.

https://twitter.com/cavs/status/1483990165450199040

Markkanen was a team-worst -12 on the night, but he wasn’t targeted defensively and it was a group “effort” (failure) in preventing DeRozan from scoring. On DeRozan’s 14 made shots only three were on Markkanen, and all were contested. He isn’t the type of defensive stopper the Cavs needed — the loss of Lamar Stevens was felt acutely, and the puzzling lack of minutes for Dean Wade — but he wasn’t the reason DeRozan sliced them up. Overall his hot shooting night helped to carry the Cavs until things came to a screeching halt, for the entire team, in the final four minutes.