“You shouldn’t mess with a good thing.”
“Never rest until your good is better and your better is best.”
Two adages purporting to be good advice…and yet also contradictory. They represent the two primary paths ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers in crafting their starting lineup for the 2022-23 NBA season.
The Cavs know they will start Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. There are a whopping five options to start at shooting guard. What the coaching staff has to decide is whether to stay the course at small forward and start Lauri Markkanen once again, or go in a more creative direction.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have to decide whether or not to continue starting Lauri Markkanen, or to try someone new. Why should the Cavs choose Lauri?
The Cavs could acquire another player to start at the 3, but that seems unlikely at this point in the offseason. They could get crazy and start Caris LeVert to juice the offensive creation, or Ochai Agbaji to get the rookie’s feet wet as they did for Isaac Okoro two seasons ago. Let’s assume for now that they have discarded those longshot options and are choosing between two players.
Should the Cavs start Lauri Markkanen or Dean Wade at small forward? The other day we made the case for Wade; let’s pivot to Markkanen now. Why should the Cavaliers start Markkanen again at the 3? Here are three reasons why.
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.
3 reasons Lauri Markkanen should start for Cavs: Fits better with starting lineup
The bottom line of Lauri Markkanen starting at small forward is that it worked. Lineups with Markkanen, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley on the court together outscored opponents by 7.9 points per 100 possessions. Add in Darius Garland, and that number spikes to 12.2.
That success very well might not carry over into a bench role. If Markkanen comes off of the bench instead of in the starting lineup, he will likely be playing significant minutes alongside Kevin Love, another stretch-big with questionable defensive chops. Opposing guards will be able to punish such lineups in space and likely get to the rim with ease.
Markkanen and Love shared the court for 546 minutes last season, and together they had a net rating of +1.9, not crippling but not as good as his fit with other players. When paired with Evan Mobley, Markkanen helped the Cavs to a +3.6 net rating. With Allen? That number was 4.7. And with Darius Garland? A whopping +8.4.
Now add on the fact that the Cavs’ potential options as shot creators off the bench, be that Caris LeVert or Collin Sexton, are themselves poor defenders. The Cavs are building an identity based on defense and size, and moving Markkanen to the bench compromises that due to the pairings it foists onto any lineup.
3 reasons Lauri Markkanen should start for Cavs: Shooting Reputation
Lauri Markkanen came into the NBA as a heralded shooter, a seven-footer with such a smooth shooting stroke that he was billed as the next Dirk Nowitzki. He shot 42.3 percent in college at Arizona and set sky-high expectations upon entering the league.
The reality has been something less than the hope, however. Only once has Markkanen shot better than 36.2 percent from 3-point range, and for his career he is a 36.4 percent shooter from deep. Our fellow FanSided Cleveland blog, Factory of Sadness, recently made the case for Markkanen to start over Wade, and they cited that”Markkanen is historically a better shooter than Wade from three” which seems like an obvious statement. It’s also not true, as Wade is a 36.5 percent shooter from deep.
What is true is that Markkanen has a better reputation as a shooter, which is perhaps what FoS was getting at, and what defenses still respond too. Defenders fight hard not to leave Markkanen open, afraid that he will burn them with his perimeter shooting. He is a willing shooter, for sure, and that brings gravity of its own. For now, teams will defend Markkanen more diligently on the perimeter than someone like Dean Wade.
There are compelling reasons to start both Lauri Markkanen and Dean Wade. We won’t make the decision here for the Cavs coaching staff, but we will also point out that this is unlikely to be a decision they are yet to make. Markkanen seems like a near-lock to start, so the team has to hope the above points propel those lineups to success. If not, perhaps the Cavs revisit the question.