5 NBA players who can make a leap by cutting down on turnovers

The power forward who can get to the next level by cutting their turnovers: Lauri Markkanen

Lauri Markkanen’s 2022-23 season was sensational. He ramped up his usage significantly and still improved his efficiency across the board. It’s rare for any player to go from role-player usage to star usage and simply maintain their efficiency, and even rarer for their efficiency to go from good to elite, but Markkanen pulled it off and was rightly rewarded with the Most Improved Player award. Markkanen’s explosion into an elite scorer made him one of the best offensive power forwards in the league, and that’s despite him turning the ball over with abandon. 

Markkanen’s 127 turnovers aren’t an obvious eye-sore, but he paired that with only 123 total assists. For power forwards, his assist-to-turnover points added was the seventh worst on a per-36-minute basis (minus-0.06), and he was ahead of a bunch of pseudo-centers, deep bench players, and rookie Tari Eason. Markkanen’s biggest problem was his proclivity to cough up live ball turnovers. As a first-time go-to option, it isn’t surprising that Markkanen showed some growing pains, but cutting his live ball turnovers by even 20 percent could see his offense go even higher. 

If Markkanen is destined to be an elite player-finisher with negligible playmaking and more turnovers than you’d like, he’s still an excellent player. However, he has some very attainable gains in the playmaking and ball security department to take his offense to near superstar levels. There’s a real likelihood that Markkanen’s 2022-23 combination of shooting volume and efficiency will go down as a career-best, but if he can make some minimal improvements in his assist-to-turnover ratio, his 2022-23 doesn’t also have to be a career year.