Lauri Markkanen should be settled in with Cavs from here after last season

There was going to be a natural adjustment period last season with the Cleveland Cavaliers for Lauri Markkanen following his sign-and-trade acquisition from the Chicago Bulls last offseason.

Markkanen had his share of time with the Cavaliers in a de facto 3 role, too, and played a considerable chunk of minutes with two other bigs in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. It was inherently going to lead some lumps for Markkanen with that sort of difference in his outlook.

All in all, though, I thought Markkanen did pretty well last season, to a large extent, after a tough start to begin the season. On the year, he had averages of 14.8 points and 5.7 rebounds per contest, and connected on 35.8 percent of his three-point attempts, of which amounted to 6.2 per game.

Markkanen did have some inconsistencies, which was only natural, with the change in his role to a considerable degree, and while there are going to be some struggles on-ball at times for him, defensively he fared better than one could’ve expected. Mobley and Allen’s abilities on that end did have some to do with it, but Markkanen’s effort defensively on closeouts and help off-ball I thought did make a difference.

Overall, next season, I’d imagine we’ll see Markkanen look more comfortable in his second year to come with the Cavaliers, and he should be settled into things with them.

Markkanen should be well-adjusted and settled in with the Cavs after last season.

Markkanen did have his lumps, and his overall numbers last season were down a bit in comparison to his time with the Bulls, in which he had 15.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per contest in four seasons with them.

That said, given Mobley and Allen playing with Markkanen when those guys were healthy, that was going to affect his rebounding splits, and more notably, it was going to take time for Markkanen to get himself comfortable offensively. His new situation and new set of teammates was going to lead to him taking some stretch of games to get in-rhythm, anyhow, and a COVID-19 health and safety protocols in November didn’t help early.

As we alluded, however, Markkanen did find his footing more from there it seemed, and despite it being unfortunate that Markkanen would miss the last 11 games prior to the All-Star break due to an ankle sprain, he rebounded from a rough patch before that in January.

And while him being more offensively at the 4 with Jarrett Allen’s finger fracture sidelining him in most of post-All-Star break did play into it some, it was good to see Markkanen get into a great rhythm to close the regular season.

In post-All-Star play, Markkanen had 16.7 points per contest, and he hit 38.1 percent of his three-point attempts. So, he carried forward how he was looking to be very comfortable in a chunk of games prior to his injury in January.

Next season, after that adjustment period in his first year with the Wine and Gold, I’d think we should see Markkanen much more settled in and finding his spots more offensively. With more experience playing off Mobley, for example, and Markkanen feasibly being much more used to Darius Garland’s playmaking, among others, I’d think that we should see Markkanen getting more quality off-ball looks. Raul Neto could help with that some, too, along with Collin Sexton, in the event that Sexton is back, which would still seem to be a good possibility.

As last season progressed, that Markkanen appeared to gradually be in a better rhythm, and next year, the 25-year-old forward should have far more clarity in his role with the Cavs. As a result, I personally foresee Markkanen being primed for a strong start to his second year with Cleveland, and he should be able to pick up where he left off last season.

Markkanen was one of the bright spots for the Cavaliers in the closing stretch of last season, which was not great overall for the club, but in fairness, injuries had a ton to do with that. Anyway, hopefully Lauri can keep up his positive momentum to start off next season from the close to last season and feel freed up on the floor looking onward.