Chicago Bulls: Lauri Markkanen is not a $20 million player

In the past week, the dialogue around Chicago Bulls big man Lauri Markkanen has been as polarizing as his play.

A 30-point and an eight-point game, against the same team, with an off day in between has set off alarm bells in every fan’s head, especially those who are looking forward in time to Markkanen’s contract negotiations.

Those alarm bells are ringing especially loud and clear in this fan’s head.

In typical armchair GM fashion, I took it upon myself to see what Markkanen’s production is worth, compared to his peers. Lauri has a unique playstyle, illustrated by his shot chart (via cleaningtheglass).

That is a special chart. It’s reminiscent of a Daryl Morey Platonic ideation. It’s a shot profile that’s not super common for big men, especially at the efficiency that Markkanen puts up. So, I created a set of criteria meant to tease out the Finnish forward and his peers, by finding efficient shooting big men, who don’t take a ton of midrange shots (via cleaning the glass):

These are the players that play a similar style offensively. (Just as a side note, I way undershot the threshold for “all threes” percentile. Every player actually is 80th or above!) Take a second and get familiarized with the stats. Take a look at the hallmarks of this group: an effective field goal percentage of above 53 percent, infrequent midrange, and a higher volume of three pointers. This is the shot profile of Lauri Markkanen, and the players that shoot the most like him; this is his archetype.

Once I found a good little grouping for Lauri to settle in to, I wanted to be able to compare them. I took their standard counting stats (Points per game, assists per game & rebounds per game) from basketball-reference.com and laid them all out. Then, I took the average of those stats, and then the standard deviation.

For all the non-statistic folks out there, The standard deviation is how far away a number has to be from an average to be considered “different.” Say the average is 10, with a standard deviation of four. That means that any number above 14 or below 6 is significant. For this case, I was looking only positive deviations from the mean, to indicate success from the baseline.

So, if any players accumulated counting stats greater than one standard deviation away from the mean, then I went a little bit more in depth with their stats. You can think of this subset of players as the better half of the archetype, which Markkanen falls into.

To flesh these players out, I went back to Cleaning the Glass to bring in defensive and rebound metrics. Keep in mind, these stats don’t paint a full picture, but they can be used as an indicator to success on the less sexy side of the ball.

What does this all mean? Let me reframe this data:

These are the players that, offensively, play the most like Lauri Markkanen, in terms of shot type. Not only are they similar in archetype, but all the players with defensive numbers perform at essentially the same level as Lauri (greater than one standard deviation away in at least one stat). However, all of these players also score in higher percentiles on the defensive/rebounding side, meaning that there is evidence that they impact more than just scoring, compared to Markkanen.

And then go ahead and take a look at the contract numbers.

Myles Turner is the closest in counting stats to Lauri Markkanen, and look at his defensive/rebounding numbers. In “stocks” (steals + blocks), he is elite for a big man. Keep in mind, this is in addition to filling the same role as Markkanen on offense. Turner is currently under contract that he signed in 2019-2020, for $18 million a year. That’s also the highest contract on the spreadsheet.

That’s all the evidence needed. A much more impactful player, who has the same archetype as Lauri offensively, is on a deal for $18 million for the next two years. JaMychal Green signed his contract last year. Even with cap inflation (I don’t have the numbers yet, but I’m not sure how high the cap can jump), Lauri’s production is more on the low end of that $12-18 million dollar range.

Lauri Markkanen has a role on the Chicago Bulls. It’s not a unique role, and others who play the same way he does oftentimes contribute more in other facets of the game. With all of that information, a re-sign for Markkanen (if he is re-signed at all) should not be for more than Turner’s current contract.