Lauri Markkanen’s first game back for Cavs at Pistons was encouraging

I know that Cleveland Cavaliers fans were less than pleased with the team taking an L against one of the league’s worst teams in the Detroit Pistons on Thursday in their first game back from Cleveland’s All-Star Weekend festivities. I wasn’t thrilled with that result, either, and rest assured, the team wants to get back on track.

Dating back to before the All-Star break, the Cavaliers have lost three straight games, with them losing to the James Harden-less Philadelphia 76ers and Atlanta Hawks (sans John Collins) on the road, and then this Pistons loss.

Now, what goes around on the injury front has come around for these Cavs, who have dealt with injuries all season long, albeit like many teams. Darius Garland was not active in that Detroit game, and is reportedly dealing with a bone bruise in his back, and will receive treatment and will need rest. That’s a situation that the team will monitor going forward and it’s something that Garland and the team will have to continually manage.

Plus, Caris LeVert sprained his right foot earlier this week, and is expected to miss (as of Thursday) 1-2 weeks, which is less than ideal. The team will have to push forward, anyhow.

On a positive note from Cleveland’s game on Thursday was that we saw Lauri Markkanen back in action for the Wine and Gold, which should pay off for others on the team and the Cavs themselves from here, provided he remains mostly healthy. Markkanen had missed the Cavaliers last 11 games before this last Pistons one because of a right ankle sprain he suffered in a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Jan. 22.

It’ll take a handful of games for Markkanen to get himself fully back, I’d assume, and he was off for stretches in that Detroit game, but he did end out with a team-high 22 points. He was only 6-of-16 from the field and 2-of-7 from three-point land, and had four fouls, which wasn’t great, however, Markkanen did not look limited, and he seemingly got better as the game progressed.

It’ll take a bit for the rhythm to get there, but Markkanen’s first game back for the Cavs at the Pistons was encouraging.

As we touched on, Markkanen was only 2-of-7 from three in that Pistons loss, and was 4-of-9 from two, so I understand why some might have been rolling their eyes at times. The stretch forward has had some stretches of games this season where he has been off from distance, too, as evidenced by a tough start and an awful stretch in December.

We have also seen plenty of occasions where Markkanen was flaming hot from deep as well, though, and I still had to give some of a grace period this season, given his new team and with Markkanen often playing with two other bigs in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen for extended stretches. That was not commonplace in his first four seasons with the Chicago Bulls.

But he’s proven to be a difference-maker more as he’s gotten more comfortable, and leading into when Markkanen initially sprained his ankle last month, he had knocked down 44.6 percent from three in his 10 games prior to that. He was getting to quality looks inside the arc, both in the on and off-ball variety, too, and shot 52.1 percent overall in that span.

So, while Markkanen was hit-or-miss in this Detroit game generally, he did still help the Cavs get right back into it down the stretch, when he hit a deep three and a mid-range look. And the Cavaliers eventually tied the game at 102 with 1:26 left from an Isaac Okoro corner three.

Granted, Markkanen did miss 1 of 2 free throws with 1:01 left, and Cade Cunningham, who was way off in the game, made both free throws with 46.8 seconds left, albeit after what looked like a phantom call on Okoro.

The Cavaliers would unfortunately miss three deep attempts, looking past that, in a last possession situation, and despite Brandon Goodwin giving Cleveland a lift in bench minutes with 15 points and five assists, his missed deep ball on Cleveland’s last shot sealed their fate. I’m not going to kill him for that, though.

Regardless, the Pistons getting Hamidou Diallo and Rodney McGruder off the bench to combine for 7-for-7 from three, and for 33 points, did the Cavs in throughout the game. That was hard to watch, to say the least.

But overall, I was encouraged from Markkanen’s play, and I’d expect to see Cleveland stress for him to be ultra-aggressive offensively, particularly with Garland banged up and the LeVert injury.

It was nice to see Markkanen attack the basket too, as he’s done pretty well this season, even with shooting ups and downs, and even with the rare miss down the stretch, he did have 10 free throw attempts, and made eight.

Hopefully the 7-foot stretch forward builds on this performance, and can get himself in better position defensively on Saturday against the Washington Wizards with more play under his belt returning from injury.