Lauri Elias Markkanen is a young Finnish professional basketball player that is now a team member of the Chicago Bulls. Back in 2017, he was already taken by the Minnesota Timberwolves, but then he was included in a trade to the Chicago Bulls for Jimmy Butler.
He is coming from a truly sporty and genetically very talented family. He is the son of the former Finnish basketball players Pekka and Riikka Markkanen and is a brother of the football player Eero Markkanen.
After being included in the Chicago Bulls, Lauri became very popular not only in his own country but outside of it as well. Therefore, you might often see his name among others on the best online betting sites.
In 2015, he was named “a possible one-and-done candidate for the NBA draft” by ESPN.com. In 2017, he was already regarded as “the best shooting 7-footer college basketball has ever seen” by SB Nation.
His career record was set on January 12 during the game against Arizona State when he scored 30 points. He also recorded a career-high 13 rebounds three times during the game with Northern Colorado, Washington, and Washington State.
Markkanen’s first international debut happened at the 2015 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship where he averaged 18.2 points per game. In 2017, he played with the Finland senior team at EuroBasket 2017 and helped his team to score 19.5 points and 5.7 rebounds over 6 games.
At the last year of his freshman studies, he announced his intention to try his luck in the 2017 NBA draft.
Chicago Bulls career path
On July 5, 2016, after being traded to the Chicago Bulls along with Zach LaVine and Kris Dunn for Jimmy Butler and Justin Patton, Markkanen officially signed a contract with the team.
His NBA debut took place on October 19, 2017, during which he scored seventeen points. After, on October 24, he set an NBA record by scoring ten 3-pointers.
On December 20, Lauri scored his career-high 32 points and seven rebounds against the Indiana Pacers.
The period from the end of 2018 and up until 2019 was hard for the player as on March 28, Markkanen was ruled out of the rest of the season due to health problems that emerged after March 26.
He was officially named the fastest player to reach 100 career 3-pointers throughout 41 played games.
But he got back even stronger and began 2019-2020 season by scoring his new career-high 35 points and 17 rebounds during the game with the Charlotte Hornets. Unfortunately, that wave of success did not last long for him as after that night he has only shot over 50% from the field and is sitting at 36.2% for the season.
Now Markkanen is barely making 25% of his 3-point looks. But Markkanen denies any changes:
“Shooters, all the players go through slumps. Everybody’s broken through it at some point. When I’m staying confident, believing every shot’s going in, I know it’s going to turn around.”
