Cleveland, a painful but salutary end for Lauri Markkanen

The 2021/22 season will go down as a special exercise in the Cavaliers’ recent history. Three years after the departure of LeBron James, it is indeed the year when Cleveland found a positive balance sheet, and ambitions.

Within JB Bickerstaff’s “Tall Ball”, Lauri Markkanen had managed to find a place for himself, notably by sacrificing himself to the position of winger in a new role, where he did not necessarily take the light but compensated by the feeling of being useful and contributing to the success of the team.

A bad for a good

His sense of sacrifice did not ultimately pay off since after one season, Cleveland gave in to the temptation to recover Donovan Mitchell. Six months after his departure, the “Finnhisher” returned to the hasty end of his adventure in Ohio, confident that the pill had struggled to pass.

“When I was in Cleveland, I took on the challenge of defending against the best players on the opposing team and really tried to do whatever the team needed me to do, and they still exchanged, he recalled in the “Draymond Green Show”. “It’s just the world of basketball that is like that. I like all the guys there, but I figured out that if a team has a chance of getting a player like Donovan, they’re probably going to pull the trigger. I understood it. It’s always difficult, especially with the family. You have to try to survive in a new environment.”

On arrival, all is well for the two teams and the two players since Donovan Mitchell has taken the Cavs to a new level and Lauri Markkanen has become the “franchise player” in Salt Lake City. “It was a blessing for me and my career. I found the right system and the right environment”he confirmed.

The click at the EuroBasket

However, rather than crediting his time in Cleveland to explain his return to grace, the interior highlighted his experience at EuroBasket, during which he learned of his transfer.

Not only because it restored his confidence in his offensive abilities, but also because it allowed the leaders of the Jazz to project themselves into the future and entrust him with the keys to their team, at a time when the hierarchy was not yet clearly defined.

“I think it’s a set of things that just coincided. Of course, there was my confidence which was super high, as a leader, being able to see any type of defense and trying to guide this team in this tournament. And when I come to Utah, like you said, there are no superstars. Everyone is trying to find their place (…). The first thing Coach Hardy said to me was, ‘We need the same version you were playing there. We need it here’. I think that was very important to me. It changed my mindset. I regained confidence in European basketball and I tried to continue this momentum. So it was a big mental shift for me too.”

Second best scorer in EuroBasket at 28 points on average per game, just behind Giannis Antetokounmpo, Lauri Markkanen has thus made the same leap in the hierarchy of the best scorers in the NBA by now being part of the Top 15 of the league, to the point to claim the MIP title at the end of the season, a trophy that could end a year rich in accomplishments, in addition to his selection for the All-Star Game.