Bulls need Markkanen to stand tall

With its large reindeer population and fiercely protected traditional claim that Santa Claus lives in Rovaniemi, Finland at Christmastime sounds picturesque.

And then there’s the Markkanen household in the province of Lapland.

“During Christmas, people always have traditions they do. We had a traditional thing where we played ice hockey and basketball,” Pekka Markkanen said via phone. “Whoever was in the house — grandparents, mothers — had to play. And everybody wanted to play.”

Pekka is the 6-foot-10 father of Lauri, whom the Chicago Bulls will introduce Tuesday after acquiring his draft rights as the seventh overall NBA draft pick from the Timberwolves on Thursday as one of the centerpieces in the Jimmy Butler trade.

Pekka averaged 6.9 points for coach Roy Williams in a 30-5 1989-90 season at Kansas and played professionally for several years in Spain, Hungary, Germany, France and Finland. His wife, the 5-foot-10-inch Riikka, had a stint playing for the Finnish national team.

Their oldest son, Eero, plays soccer — or what is called football everywhere else in the world — professionally in Sweden. And their second son, Miikka, played basketball professionally in Finland before injuries curtailed his career.

And then there’s Lauri, the tallest of them all at a legit 7 feet.

“I think Lauri is special,” Pekka said. “Of course all our kids have a professional aptitude for sport. But I have never met a person who is so focused on one thing. Whatever he does — what he eats, when he sleeps — he always thinks how it affects his basketball.”

This has been a long-standing … what’s the word: habit? problem? practice? obsession?

A Finnish youth coach recently rediscovered a diary Lauri kept at age 10 detailing how many hours he worked on his shot and shared the information with Pekka. Lauri spent 4½ hours every day perfecting the form that helped him shoot 42.3 percent from 3-point range and average 15.6 points for a 32-5 team in his lone season at Arizona.

Arizona coach Sean Miller knows Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg well from their shared college coaching days.

“Fred has a great offensive mind. When he was at Iowa State, he was always very creative in how he would utilize different players to create opportunities to shoot 3s. Lauri will help that,” Miller said. “When he sets the ball screen, teams have to pay attention to him. And when he’s not setting it, he’s such a threat in catch-and-shoot.

“I have a good feeling that this pick will be looked back on as a very, very good moment for the Bulls.”

It needs to be. The Bulls are rebuilding, and draft hits have to be the norm.