You could tell, watching this game, that Stacey King was starting to lose it. When things are going bad for the Bulls, he gets antsy and starts saying weird things. Case in point: with the Bulls down by double-digits to the Hawks (who are not a good team), he suggested, multiple times, that Lauri Markkanen be played at the small forward position.
When I first thought about it, I laughed, because the concept of a seven-footer playing small forward is funny to me unless we’re talking about Kevin Durant. Then I got to thinking: who else on the Bulls can even play the small forward position? They just acquired Carmelo Anthony, but he’s not playing. I don’t think he’s even with the team. They have Jabari Parker, but he’s in the doghouse, plus he would get exposed trying to guard quicker wings. Chandler Hutchinson is a small forward I guess, but he’s a rookie and he’s super low-volume. Not starter-quality by any stretch. And that’s about it for SF’s on the Bulls. The proverbial cupboards are bare.
So, as you can kind of tell from the above paragraph, I’ve been convinced that the “Markkanen as a 3” experiment should at least be attempted for a few games. If it doesn’t succeed, well, the Bulls weren’t gonna succeed anyway, so there was no real harm done.