It was a clash of past and present, when Lauri Markkanen launched himself from the dotted line and met Rudy Gobert high above the Target Center floor. His right arm cracked atop Gobert's frosted head. Markkanen ripped on the iron and the whole basket shook. All this commotion, all while the fresh shockwaves from Utah's sweeping offseason — bidding goodbye not only to Gobert, but All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell as well — and landing the Finnish forward as a member of the very much rebuilding Jazz, still hadn't fully settled.
Utah Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen dribbles down the court during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, in Minneapolis. It was a clash of past and present, when Lauri Markkanen launched himself from the dotted line and met Rudy Gobert high above the Target Center floor. His right arm cracked atop Gobert’s frosted head. Markkanen ripped on the iron and the whole basket shook.
Summer FIBA commitments have always been a tricky subject to navigate. From an NBA team’s perspective, any exhibition play presents obvious injury risk. Just ask Boston and Danilo Gallinari, who tore his ACL suiting up for Italy not two months after signing a two-year, $13.3 million deal with the Celtics.
What Markkanen said next left his lips as a joke. “Oh, I wonder … am I a part of this?” But then the words hung there, the paused video game hovering in the background, the silence flooding his earpiece. And before reality could fully fill that space, not even a full minute having passed, Markkanen’s phone rattled once more.
Bulls coaches marveled then at the film of their prized rookie freelancing for Finland, a 20-year-old playing with a country on his shoulders, scoring 19.5 points with dazzling efficiency over 27 minutes per game. “That’s when we got really excited,” former Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said. “Because he’s a 7-footer that can shoot it, can dribble it. You just don’t have a lot of those guys with that type of athleticism.
The coach and his wife hosted the Markkanens for occasional dinners, welcoming newlyweds far from home for a home-cooked meal. This was no prodigy being seduced by temptations that come with a life in the league. By the end of January, Markkanen rushed Verna to the hospital, when son Alvar took his first breath as the Bulls departed for a three-game road trip. Markkanen watched Chicago play the Trail Blazers and Clippers from his wife’s bedside. “He’s very much a family man,” Hoiberg says.
He built an even stronger foundation in Northeast Ohio with the Cavaliers. Coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s experimental three-big lineup put Markkanen back in a perimeter-oriented place. In trial by combat, he was tasked with guarding opponents’ most dangerous wings. And with the safety net of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley as a comfort, Markkanen flashed a surprising feistiness guarding beyond the arc, shuffling his feet in space. Cleveland won, in the beginning, and he and Verna bought a home.