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Managing the Lauri Markkanen hype coming out of EuroBasket 2017

If you didn’t get a chance to watch Lauri Markkanen play during his six games with his native Finland bunch for EuroBasket 2017 in the last couple weeks, let’s just say that he wasn’t nicknamed the “Finnish Michael Jordan” for anything.

I’m likely the only person on the planet that called him that because he wore No. 23 for Finland during the tournament, but Markkanen looked like a potential NBA star with his performance.

Even with a weird game in the EuroBasket’s Round of 16 that resulted in Finland’s elimination from the tournament where Markkanen only scored four points on six shots in just over 20 minutes of action, the 20-year-old rookie could be one of the few bright spots for the Bulls this season and beyond.