After the Utah Jazz took care of business against the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night and Lauri Markkanen dropped a very casual 27 points on 52/42/100 shooting splits our very own James Hansen fired off this tweet:

At first glance this seemed crazy - Lauri has been fantastic this year - but surely this is some serious homer-ism showing through here. The thought continued gnawing at me and I started diving into the numbers. I’m here to convince you all today that James may not be crazy, and in fact, he might be right on the money.

The Current All-NBA Landscape

I ran through the exercise of picking my 3 All-NBA teams to start off this journey, the table below shows where I ended up after my own analysis.

Now that you’ve seen the end result I’m going to work back through how I ended up here in Tarantino-esque fashion. Since Lauri is designated as a Forward - I’ll focus on how I decided on those 6 players.

First Team All-NBA

The two first-team guys are very straightforward - there is not really any argument here. Jayson Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the best players on the two best teams in the NBA. Their numbers are ridiculous, and they have played in almost every game. Open and shut case.

Second Team All-NBA

The second team is where things get pretty interesting. The shortlist of guys that I was looking at for the 4 remaining forward spots was as follows:

• Kevin Durant
• LeBron James
• Pascal Siakam
• Lauri Markkanen
• Julius Randle
• Paul George
• Kawhi Leonard
• Jimmy Butler
• Jerami Grant
• Mikal Bridges
• Aaron Gordon

Looking closer at counting stats I ended up eliminating Mikal Bridges, Aaron Gordon, and Jerami Grant. The raw statistical case wasn’t really there however, the advanced numbers love Aaron Gordon.

The next elimination I made was games played. I firmly believe one of the best abilities in the NBA is availability. I eliminated anyone that hadn’t played 40 games by this point in the season. This was an arbitrary number, most teams have played about 60 games so I looked at guys that had played in at least ²⁄₃ of those games. This eliminated Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard. Obviously, the elimination of these two players really helps clear a path for Lauri - and many voters/writers probably don’t weigh availability as heavily as I do here. My argument is that this is a regular season award, and it should reflect the 2022-2023 season. In the 2022-2023 season, it just so happens that Kawhi and KD have both missed a lot of games. The All-NBA Teams are not a career achievement award.

Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images

To help you keep track this leaves us with the following players:

• LeBron James
• Pascal Siakam
• Lauri Markkanen
• Julius Randle
• Paul George
• Jimmy Butler

6 players for 4 spots - and all of these guys have great individual resumes. The next thing I looked at was team success, and this led to helping make the distinction between the second team and the third team. Paul George and Julius Randle end up in the second team because they are on the 5th-seeded teams in each conference, Lauri Markkanen and the rest of the players on this list are living in play-in tournament territory (or on the outside looking in if you’re LeBron).

Third Team All-NBA

We are down to 4 guys for the 2 remaining spots. The first cut I’m making is LeBron James - this is in large part due to the news that came out yesterday that he’ll be missing an indefinite amount of time with a foot injury.

The Lakers have also been terrible until very recently, so with that combination of lacking team success and potential games played diminishing significantly I decided that LeBron doesn’t belong on the list.

The next cut was Jimmy Butler for me. The Heat have a better record than the Jazz and Raptors, however, his per-game numbers don’t quite measure up to Pascal Siakam or Lauri Markkanen, and the advanced stats don’t help his case.

Lauri Markkanen may not be the self-creator/playmaker that Pascal or Jimmy is, but he is a hyper-efficient scoring option that is just a few more made free throws away from being in the highly coveted 50/40/90 club. He also makes much more of an impact defensively than he’s given credit for. Markkanen ranks 16th in defensive efficiency per 100 possessions for all players with more than 1,200 minutes played this year according to Cleaning The Glass (CTG). He has the 8th-highest overall efficiency differential in the NBA looking at the same group of players on CTG. The real notable names ahead of him in this statistic are Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant. That is truly elite company.

Will He Make It?

I can’t say with full confidence that Lauri Markkanen will make an All-NBA team this year, but there is certainly a strong case to be made that he belongs in that conversation. It will take a heavier weighting toward games played to edge out players like Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James, but Lauri’s statistical resume is right on the fringes of being in conversation with those guys even if you set aside availability. If Lauri continues on this current trajectory he’ll continue being in this conversation as a top-15 player in the NBA for years to come, and as a Jazz fan that is tremendously exciting.

All stats courtesy of Basketball Reference, Cleaning The Glass, and PBP Stats