Time for Bulls to admit they may have broken Lauri Markkanen

Three is more than two.

That’s the hill NBA analytics disciples are dying on.

It’s a hill the Bulls decided to climb preparing for the season. Maybe not to the tippy-top like some teams around the league have, but they definitely made camp near the summit.

To say the Bulls have killed the midrange game as an option for their players is an overgeneralization, one the front office and coaching staff have taken exception to.

Vice president of basketball operations John Paxson has said that if it’s a good midrange shot, players have the green light. However, guards Coby White and Zach LaVine have publicly insisted that the message early in training camp was there are no good midrange shots and they were told to limit them.

So it’s all semantics coming out of the Advocate Center.

What analytics departments fail to understand, however, is the human element in shot-making.

And while no one in the Bulls’ organization can reasonably explain the sudden erosion of Lauri Markkanen’s game in his third season — the season that NBA personnel have always felt is the sink-or-swim season for a young star — maybe the change in shot-profiling is the prime suspect.

Markkanen likes the midrange game. He used it throughout his first two seasons. It gets him comfortable.

Last year, he was 35-for-104 (33.7 percent) from midrange and 67-for-161 (41.6 percent) from in the paint but outside the restricted area. Those aren’t great numbers, especially considering he shot 36.5 percent from three. After all, three is more than two.

But having that option and feeling like there’s a middle ground to beat a defense can’t necessarily be depicted in a chart or a graph.

That’s where analytics fail, and maybe the Bulls have failed one of their supposed great young prospects.

Let’s talk numbers, since that’s important to analytics.

From midrange this season, Markkanen is 5-for-19 (26.3 percent). In the paint outside the restricted area, he’s 22-for-70 (31.4 percent). From three, he’s at 34.2 percent (97-for-284), and that came off a hot December in which he shot 41.6 percent from long range.

So, yes, Markkanen is shooting threes at a much higher volume, but he has become a worse scorer, averaging a career-low 14.9 points per game.

How has this so-called improved shot profile actually improved the 7-footer?

The other part of this backward development, courtesy of numbers people, is what Markkanen has turned into.

Unlike LaVine, Markkanen rarely has the ball in his hands. His activity and his chance to show off his athleticism start with rebounding. That’s where Markkanen was at his best last February. Get the rebound and go.

Because the Bulls want more threes from Markkanen, he admitted to the media Monday that far too often he feels like all he’s asked to do is pick-and-pop. They’ve taken a 22-year-old active, underrated athlete and made him a spot-up shooter off screens.

Markkanen’s rebounds have dropped from nine per game last season to 6.5 this season, and his second-half numbers this season have all dropped compared to his first-half numbers.

Standing around too often in offensive sets has neutered Markkanen, and human nature has him checking out of too many games by the second half.

When you feel like a one-trick pony, you play like a one-trick pony.

Is three more than two? Absolutely. But the only numbers that matter are wins, and the Bulls have just 16 of those with a young player regressing in the rebuild.

Analytics that.