What injury report? Bulls coach says misfiring Lauri Markkanen deserves praise for playing hurt

About that nagging production gap between where 7-footer Lauri Markkanen was expected to be in Year 3 and where he actually is:

Come on, it’s hardly anything.

That’s how coach Jim Boylen made it sound, anyway, before Tuesday’s 120-102 victory over the Knicks at the United Center.

Markkanen’s scoring is down to 14.7 points per game, or four points shy of where he was last season. His 27.3 percent shooting from the three-point line has been a glaring part of the problem, and his 12 shots (threes and twos) per game are lower than when he was a rookie.

“Is it a matter of him making one more layup than he has in a game and one more three?” Boylen said. “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation. It would be five more points on his average, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

But why stop there? Toss in another couple of threes per game and the 22-year-old Finn would almost be cracking the top 10 in scoring. Heck, he might be an All-Star.

Back on Planet Earth, Markkanen is failing to follow up his outstanding performance in the Bulls’ season opener — 35 points and 17 rebounds in a loss at Charlotte — with anything close to it.

Over the 10 games since, his highs in points and rebounds are 18 and 11, respectively.

And he started slowly again Tuesday, playing all but 2:08 of the first quarter without scoring a bucket until his final minute. He finished slowly, too, ending with 13 points and six turnovers.

“I can play a lot better than I’ve been playing,” Markkanen said. “First of all, I’ve got to look at myself in the mirror. What can I do better? We’ve got a lot of guys this year [who] can score the ball, so it might be a different guy every night.”

Last week, Markkanen made a similar comment about needing to “look in the mirror.” He followed that up with a relative no-show in a blowout loss to the Rockets at home.

Maybe he just hasn’t found the right mirror? Or needs a bigger one?

Or could it be that he’s hurt? Or hurt-ish?

Boylen tried to give him a little cover on the injury front, pointing to a “sore oblique” that has dogged him for a couple of weeks.

“If you’ve ever had one of those, it’s just a weird injury,” Boylen said. “It’s not enough to keep you out; it’s not enough to kind of stop your momentum. But it’s enough to maybe influence maybe how you do things and how you play, and he’s fought through it and I’m really proud of him.”

Yet it’s not enough to land Markkanen on the daily injury report, even as a “probable”? There wasn’t a peep about an oblique injury through the Bulls’ first 10 games.

Their 2017 first-round pick soldiers on.

“We need Lauri Markkanen to be Lauri Markkanen,” Boylen said. “We need him to be a driver, a handler, a defensive rebounder. We need him to be the multifaceted, multidimensional 7-foot guy that we’ve seen him play like — that we know he can play like. We need him to play like that more consistently. He knows it. We know it. He has high character, and it’s just a matter of time to me.”

Markkanen acknowledges his engagement level on the offensive end has been “varying.” He knows he needs to put the ball on the floor more and be aggressive going to the basket. He’d like to do a better job of reading defenses, especially on closeouts.

A shot? Or a shot-fake and a drive? In Year 3, a player as skilled as Markkanen probably ought to be displaying a better feel.

“I know I can play better,” he said. “Maybe our record would be a little bit better if we played at our own [levels].”