The Utah Jazz had to get creative in their latest loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, and that meant turning Lauri Markkanen into the team’s center for stretches down the stretch.
The move came after starting center Jaxson Hayes got into foul trouble early, finishing with six fouls in 21 minutes. With the Jazz also dealing with the absence of Jaren Jackson Jr. and Jusuf Nurkic, Will Hardy had limited options in the frontcourt and was forced to improvise.
Markkanen is hardly a regular at the five. Over the past four seasons in Utah, he has played center for 23% of his minutes, according to Basketball Reference.
That figure has dipped to 14% over the last two years. Still, the Jazz leaned on him as their primary big man for multiple minutes against New Orleans.
Hardy didn’t sound like this was the start of a permanent change. He said after the game that Markkanen handled the role well, especially considering the All-Star is dealing with “a lot of pain right now.”
“Yeah, I thought Lauri, you know, he’s digging in. I think he’s playing through a lot of pain right now. I think he’s really battling for his teammates and for us,” Hardy said postgame.
“He doesn’t play a ton of five in general. But, with some of the injuries and then some foul trouble, sometimes you have to change things up. I think he’s doing a pretty good job.”
Markkanen’s box score backed that up. He logged 39 minutes and finished with 22 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, one steal and two blocks.
He also gave Utah a needed lift from deep in a game where the Jazz once again ran into shooting issues as a team. Markkanen knocked down five threes and shot over 40% from beyond the arc.
There’s an obvious offensive upside to using him at center. The floor opens up, the spacing improves, and Utah gets another scoring threat in a season where the Jazz sit in the bottom 10 of the NBA in offensive rating.
The tradeoff shows up on the other end. Markkanen is not the same defender or rebounder as most centers, and that can create a real problem against bigger lineups.
That’s why Hardy sees the role as something to deploy selectively, not nightly.
“There are some things that he can improve, like everybody can, but these are also defensive situations he hasn’t been in a ton,” Hardy continued postgame.
“We’ll keep looking at it. I don’t know how much Lauri will play five moving forward.
I think there will be some opportunities for it, and some nights it won’t make as much sense. It’ll be a night-to-night thing.
Through eight games, the Jazz have already cycled through a number of interesting rotation choices, and that kind of experimentation may keep coming until they settle on a formula that starts producing wins.
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