If all the Utah Jazz players are going to make us want to click this season, we wanted to focus on the one who could get into our hearts and push us to subdue the Mormons for the 2022-23 NBA season. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your little dose of Lauri Markkanen.
Not sure that the Finn would have been the headliner of this paper three weeks ago. But EuroBasket 2022 went through it and Markkanen was so exceptional with his selection that the choice imposed itself. 28 points and 8 rebounds on average to take Finland to the quarter-finals of the Euro, hello monster. Lauri truly carried an entire nation on his shoulders, not hesitating to take himself for Kevin Durant as when he disgusted the Croats with 43 pawns on the clock in the round of 16 of the competition. So inevitably, after such a festival we wonder what he will be able to offer us at Jazz during the coming season, he who has just landed in the City of Salt Lake as part of Donovan Mitchell’s trade. New team, new responsibilities, all in the full reconstruction project of Danny Ainge, this is perhaps the year when Lauri will really explode on the NBA scene and thus justify the great hopes placed in him after his very promising debut in the side of Chicago a few years ago. At the time of writing, we don’t know if Lauri is really part of the Jazz’s plans after the departures of Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, but he could make everyone agree if he plays like with the selection.
What version will we have of Lauri Markkanen? That of EuroBasket 2022 or the one we saw in the NBA where he is just a decent player but nothing more? At 25, it’s time for the Finnish star to show that she can become a dominant player in the biggest league in the world, and the Jazz can give her that opportunity.