Cavs Player Grades: Lauri Markkanen does fine in new situation

It was a fun season as a Cleveland Cavaliers fan. No, the team didn’t end up making the postseason, as they lost two play-in games to the Brooklyn Nets and Atlanta Hawks, but they did do better than anybody would’ve realistically anticipated.

The Cavaliers stumbled post-All-Star break, which still stings, but injuries throughout their season didn’t help, and in the closing portion of the season, Jarrett Allen was not involved. All in all, it was still a heck of a season, as the Cavaliers won 44 games, the most in a season for them without LeBron James on the roster since 1998, and as we alluded to, that was despite a myriad of injuries.

One of the interesting storylines from the season heading into it was how the team would fit in Lauri Markkanen, who was a key sign-and-trade acquisition last offseason from the Chicago Bulls. The team ended up actually going with Markkanen as its de facto starting 3, where he was often in the season, at least seemingly offensively.

There was an adjustment for Markkanen, clearly, and it, as expected, some time for him to get settled in and acclimated with his new squad after his first four seasons with Chicago. Markkanen started slow, which was understandable, and then a COVID-19 health and safety protocols absence in November occurred.

He did respond well after that, though, and was playing off of others well, including other bigs. Now, admittedly, there were some other inconsistencies for Markkanen in the season, and defensively, I’m not going to say he didn’t struggle at times on-ball against wings a fair amount.

But he stayed the course, and I thought in his first season did decently, all things considered.

With that, we’ll get into how Markkanen graded out in his first season with the Cavs here.

First, we’ll hit on the offensive end.