Lauri Markkanen has been in the NBA for eight years now, and he’s had his most success while playing for the Utah Jazz. However, even with his NBA success, he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. With the EuroBasket tournament, Markkanen did not have a second thought to represent his home country Finland.
EuroHoops confirmed that Markkanen will lead the Finnish team during the tournament, where they hope to compete for the championship. As it turns out, Markkanen is the only NBA player playing for the Finnish team (Fun fact: Markkanen is one of only three Finnish players to play in the NBA, with the other two being Hanno Mattola and Erik Murphy, neither of whom had nearly the same success Markkanen did).
Even though Markkanen is not the team captain, he has gone on public record with some pretty inspirational words that make him look like a leader that the squad needs. More than that, this is not The Finnisher’s first time playing for Finland’s basketball team.
Before coming to America, Markkanen made his mark (no pun intended) for the FIBA Under-18 and UNder-20 tournaments in 2015 and 2016 respectively. He was then elevated to the senior national team for the EuroBasket tournament in 2017…
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