The Jazz Are Cooling Off, But No One Told Lauri Markkanen

All good things must come to an end. Having lost five games in a row, the hot start that the Utah Jazz got out to this season seems to have fully cooled off.

Despite reforming almost the entirely of their on-court product this past offseason – including the coaching staff – and downgrading their playing talent from two incumbent All-Stars to none, the Jazz came out of the gates storming with an unlikely amount of synergy, and peeled off 12 wins in their first 18 games. Included in that stretch was a win over the West’s best Phoenix Suns, and two wins over the Memphis Grizzlies. They were considerably better than everyone expected, including those who expected them to be better than everyone else expected.

The same growing pains that it was thought they would inevitably hit, though, are seemingly finally here. Dropping the reverse fixture to the Suns was understandable, yet included in that five-game stretch were comparatively limp performances in losses to the lowly Detroit Pistons and the haphazard Chicago Bulls. It has all been a bit less fun this past wee.

On the plus side, though, Lauri Markkanen has shown no sign of cooling off.

Markkanen joined the Jazz as a key piece of the trade that sent Donovan Mitchell to the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was not a given, however, to be the key piece. Included in a package along with Ochai Agbaji, a signed-and-traded Collin Sexton, three fully unprotected first-round draft picks and two other first-round pick swaps, the Cavaliers seemed to woo the Jazz with the sheer volume of incoming assets as much as they did the particulars of any of them.

Nonetheless, Markkanen has been playing more like Finland Lauri than NBA Lauri. That is to say, the Jazz have been giving him an expanded role on the offensive end, just like the Finnish national team do. Markannen is by far the most talented player in Finnish basketball, and so when he plays for his nation, he is empowered to do more than he has hitherto mostly done in the NBA.

Billed mostly as a jump shooter, Markkanen’s first five NBA seasons were spent doing a lot of just that. Initially adding a lot of mid-rangers to a high volume of threes (before mercifully putting that to bed in his first year), he averaged as-near-as-was 15 points per game across those five years, on as-near-as-was 36% three-point shooting, on as-near-as-was an even .500 three-point rate. He was never just a shooter, but he was mostly one.

This year, though, the Jazz have allowed Lauri to do more. To handle the ball in transition, and to attack the lane. To be both halves of the pick-and-roll game, and not just the pop threat. To create off the bounce, and to be more heavily sought after off of screens. That is to say, the Jazz are empowering Markkanen to play more like a traditional wing on offence than merely a stretch big. And when he is doing so in a 7’0 frame, he becomes the big mismatch advantage.

On the season to date, Markkanen is averaging 22.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game, all big improvements on the 14.8/5.7/1.3 he averaged in his one season in Cleveland. Clearly enjoying his new style and new level of play, he has become a go-to guy for the Jazz in a way that he never was in either Cleveland (who used him as a small forward for much of the year, in a manner sub-optimal to his individual performance, which the team did anyway because he was a much better talent than the other options) or in Chicago (who never in four years gave him the consistent confidence he now enjoys).

Certainly, Cleveland would have kept Lauri if they could. Alongside Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, Markkanen would have been the ideal third big for the Cavaliers, superseding the wily veteran Kevin Love in the floor-spacing scorer role. Nevertheless, to get players the quality of Donovan Mitchell – who has not disappointed at all – a team must give up quality of its own. Markkanen is quality, who is taking advantage of his opportunities, and whose play to date can leave both sides pretty confident at this juncture that the trade was a win-win.