3 reasons Lauri Markkanen should start for the Cavs at small forward

3 reasons Lauri Markkanen should start for Cavs: Switching Bigs on Defense

The Cavs came out of the gates last season starting Lauri Markkanen at the 3. This was a surprise to many and extremely unorthodox, as Markkanen is seven-foot tall and lacks the footspeed to easily scale up to small forward. Already a below-average defender, the idea that Markkanen could hold up defending smaller forwards in space was laughable.

To their credit, the Cavs planned for this, introducing a number of defensive wrinkles. One of these was a zone, with Evan Mobley as the tip of the spear, and that worked well as a change-of-pace move. What worked even better was executing a switching scheme for the bigs: whenever an opponent’s screening action involved two of the bigs, they simply switched.

That meant Markkanen could sit back a step and stay in position on a screen, rather than lunging out to try and stay glued to his man. The similar size of Allen, Mobley and Markkanen made this work, and inserting a smaller player like Dean Wade into the starting lineup would limit these big-big switches.