Cash Considerations Podcast: Bulls Core Four — Lauri Markkanen

Cash Considerations is back, and on this week’s episode Jason and Ricky talk all things Lauri Markkanen. After a brief rundown of the performances of Tomas Satoransky and Cristiano Felicio at the FIBA World Cup, we do a deep dive into Markkanen’s sophomore season in the NBA, which was truncated because of an early injury. Despite that setback, Markkanen showed legitimate star potential in February, and we talk about what he must do to become a true cornerstone on the next great Bulls team.

Some numbers on Lauri from Ricky:

Big takeaway: he needs to improve as a creator.

68.4% of Lauri’s buckets were assisted last year.

All-Stars:

• AD: 65%
• Middleton: 42%
• Blake: 41%
• Simmons: 43%
• Embiid: 55%
• LMA: 59%
• Jokic: 54%
• Towns: 65%
• Vucevic: 71%

Markkanen is already so good at using a drag step to beat closeouts and score in transition. Would love to see him utilize the same body control + touch to score out of isolations. Last year: 10th percentile in iso opportunities, which is not good.

Good Lauri numbers from last year:

• 93rd percentile on runners
• 70th% on spot-ups
• 74th% as the roll man
• 88th% in pick-and-pop
• 70th% in cuts
• 80% in putbacks

Bad Lauri numbers:

• 1.6 assists per-36
• 0.8 steals per-36
• 0.7 blocks per-36
• 48% on two-pointers
• 4.2 FTA per-36

Cash Considerations is part of the Blue Wire sports podcasting network. The pod can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play.