Can Lauri Markkanen Revitalize His Trade Value?
Lauri Markkanen is marooned in Utah. And his only way out is to recapture his form.
The Utah Jazz have a clear vision for their rebuild. After jettisoning Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell in a single summer, the Jazz assembled a wondrous trove of draft picks, only rivaled by the Oklahoma City Thunder’s vaunted stores. With ten (likely) future first-round picks and swaps between 2026 and 2032, the Jazz have cultivated the seeds to grow a contender, but for all the promises of a bountiful harvest down the line, little has begun to germinate. As the Jazz have turned their attention to the future, they’ve neglected their solitary grove already capable of bearing fruit. Lauri Markkanen, the prize of the early stages of their rebuild, has seen the Jazz continue further into the depths of their rebuild, and in the process, has gone from a building block to the trading block.
When the Jazz acquired Markkanen as part of the Donovan Mitchell trade in the summer of 2022, they certainly believed they had landed a good player, but even I doubt they had any inclination of the level he would ascend to. In his first season riding the briny waves of the great Salt Lake, Markkanen exploded for 25.6 points per game on a true shooting percentage (TS%) 10% better than the league average, made his first All-Star team, and won Most Improved Player. He followed his breakout season by averaging 23.2 points per game on a TS% 9% better than the league average. Despite the dip in scoring and efficiency, he actually improved his offensive box plus/minus (OBPM) from 4.9 to 5.1, largely by trimming his turnovers per 100 possessions from 2.7 to 2.0.
This is not hyperbole: Markkanen, over that two-season span, was one of the 15 best offensive players in the NBA. He was one of 15 players to finish in the top 20 of OBPM in both 2022-23 and 2023-24, and his average OBPM among the group ranked 11th, just ahead of Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Jayson Tatum, and only a fraction off of Donovan Mitchell’s figure. (Joel Embiid did not qualify due to injury in 2023-24; he averaged a 7.5 OBPM, so if you want, you can mentally place him third on the chart.)
While I would rather have the cohort just below Markkanen due to their ability to create offense and defend, Markkanen proved to be the absolute best player of a specific archetype– the play-finishing power forward.
Following this legitimate two-season star turn from Markkanen, the prospects of Utah trading him amplified. The Jazz might have been surprisingly competent in the Western Conference, but they weren’t a playoff team and were still clearly focused on a future that likely didn’t align with the remainder of Markkanen’s prime. Throw in the fact that Markkanen still had one more year on the four-year, $67 million deal he signed with the Cavaliers, and the Jazz had one of the more valuable trade assets in the league.
Instead of trading Markkanen in the summer of 2024, the Jazz did the opposite, opting to renegotiate and extend him. They bumped his compensation in 2024-25 from $18 million to $42.2 million, and then tacked on another four years and $195.9 million, bringing the total contract to five years, $238 million. Not only was Markkanen suddenly fairly compensated, but he couldn’t be traded for another six months, which would expire one day after the 2025 February 6th trade deadline, effectively granting him a one-season no-trade clause.
Even though Markkanen was set to earn 30% of the cap in 2025-26, if he had simply added another season at close to the level he had shown the prior two, he’d still be on an eminently tradeable contract. Unfortunately, that’s not how things played out, and more bad news was waiting in the wings.
Marooned on a roster stripped of talent and dealing with a nagging back injury, Markkanen slumped to 19 points per game on a TS% 1% below the league average, and his OBPM cratered to 1.8. He saw his 3-point shooting and 2-point efficiency drop to their lowest levels since the 2019-20 season, and what was once an All-NBA caliber player on a bargain deal was now a decidedly below All-Star level contributor on a max contract.
To make matters worse, the NBA’s financial projections came in much lower than anticipated. With the NBA’s new national television rights deal set to kick in, the expectation was that the salary cap would rise by 10% each season for at least the next half-decade. However, uncertainty over teams’ local television deals muted the league’s financial projections and only further dragged down Markkanen’s trade value. Even if Markkanen had maintained his production, the league’s financial realities were always going to be a stumbling block.
Despite all of the bad news, the way the Jazz and Markkanen structured his contract to dip slightly in 2026-27 still gives them a chance to cash in mightily if he can regain his form, and there are at least positive signs in that direction.
One of the regrettable side effects of tanking is how it clouds people’s perception of player injuries. Last season, Markkanen only played 47 games as he battled a nagging back injury. Instead of people believing that Markkanen was indeed injured, they made unfounded claims that he and the Jazz were embellishing the injury so they could hold him out and improve their lottery odds. While that has happened in the past, the sudden and dramatic decline in his production should have been a tell that perhaps he wasn’t right physically.
In 2024-25, Markkanen saw a decrease in his attempts less than five feet from the basket from 4.6 per game in 2023-24 to 3.6, while also experiencing an efficiency decline from 66.9% to 64.3%. The same trend was also present on attempts five to nine feet from the basket. He went from 2.1 attempts per game on 44.1% shooting to 1.7 on 40% shooting. The idea that a balky back impacted his athleticism and thus his ability to get to the rim and finish is hardly a nebulous excuse. When you mix all this with his first below-average 3-point shooting season since 2019-20, it becomes a lot easier to understand his precipitous fall, but it doesn’t preclude him from a bounce back.
Hopefully, for Markkanen and to a much lesser extent the Jazz, the notion that time is a flat circle proves to be true. Back in the summer of 2022, the same summer the Jazz acquired Markkanen, EuroBasket, much like this summer, was being held. Finland is far from a basketball power, with their best showing at EuroBasket being a sixth-place finish in 1967. However, led by Markkanen, the Finns made their best run in over half a century, finishing seventh and only being ousted in the quarter-finals by the eventual champions, Spain.
Make no mistake, Finland’s impressive showing was almost entirely down to Markkanen’s excellence. He averaged 27.9 points per game, second in the tournament to Giannis Antetokounmpo, on 54.2% percent shooting, along with 6.7 rebounds per game (9th) in only 28.4 minutes per game. It isn’t a stretch to suggest that EuroBasket 2022 was the springboard that launched Markkanen’s newfound level in the NBA, and he’s back at it again this summer.
Over four games, Markkanen is averaging 29 points per game on 48.6% shooting, and destroyed Great Britain to the tune of 43 points in only 23 minutes. His competition hasn’t included the giants of European basketball, but the absurd shooting volume he’s shouldering– 17.6 field goal attempts and 10.8 free throw attempts per game– in only 29.5 minutes per game, suggests he’s fully healthy.
Markkanen regaining his All-Star form isn’t a necessity for the Jazz to execute their rebuild, but it is if Markkanen ever wants to make his mark in the playoffs. For a player of his quality, it’s patently absurd that he has never reached the postseason. While being drafted by the Bulls didn’t help, most of it is a result of bad luck. For his career, his teams have been +3.8 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court compared to when he sits (rising to +7.3 since leaving Chicago), but they also have a -2.2 net rating with him out there (+0.8 post-Chicago). If you’re doing the math, Markkanen, over the course of eight seasons, has been on teams that have posted a -6.0 net rating when he isn’t playing. Unless you’re Nikola Jokic, it’s incredibly difficult to drag a team to the playoffs when they’re the keystone cops in your absence.
The 2025-26 season might be the most important season of Markkanen’s career. He established an exceptionally high level, got paid, and then suffered through an injury-plagued down year right as he got expensive. If he can remain healthy, a significant if, and approximate his form from 2022-23 and 2023-24, there’s a real chance he becomes the best available player at the 2026 deadline. While he’s unlikely to command a godfather-style offer, his contract dipping slightly in 2026-27 could give him extra appeal to expensive teams. A $280,000 decline in salary is a pittance in NBA terms, but with the cap expected to increase by almost $10 million, his salary, as a percentage of the cap, projects to drop by 2.05% between 2025-26 and 2026-27. For teams up against the first or second apron, any amount of savings, even if they’re temporary, can go a long way.
Lauri Markkanen’s trade request has to come in the form of production. Based on his down 2024-25 season, he’s an untradable albatross, but it won’t take much for him to recapture his shine. If he hits the ground running, hot off an excellent EuroBasket, his one-down year will evaporate like a dew drop in the midday sun. It’s simply impossible to fluke your way to the heights Markkanen produced between 2022-23 and 2023-24. Whether it’s a midseason trade or an offseason move, Markkanen deserves to be on a playoff team, which means getting out of Utah. But to do that, he needs to resuscitate his trade value. Fortunately for him, he looks well on his way to recapturing his form and revitalizing his trade value.
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.