DETROIT — Back in 2015, at the FIBA U18 EuroBasket tournament, a young Lauri Markkanen noticed one of the Ukranian players warming up, doing between-the-leg dunks, out-jumping and out-shooting everyone else on the court.
Markkanen was already intimidated, playing with and against players that were a year or more older than him. But this Ukranian player was something else, and he was committed to a blue blood U.S. program at the University of Kansas.
That player was Svi Mykhailiuk.
Markkanen would eventually also commit to a premier collegiate basketball program at the University of Arizona. The two would also get drafted into the NBA, share an agent, work out together during the offseasons and then come together as NBA teammates. But their paths weren’t exactly the same.
Markkanen left Arizona after his freshmen season and was the No. 7 overall draft pick in 2017. With stops in Chicago, Cleveland and now with the Utah Jazz, he has always been a large part of a night-to-night rotation and is now easily regarded as the Jazz’s best player.
Mykhailiuk played for four years at Kansas before entering the draft and getting picked in the second round (47th overall) in 2018. Since then he’s played for eight different teams, always trying to find his footing in the NBA.
“Unfortunately, that’s part of the NBA,” Markkanen said. “No matter how much I love my teammates, that’s part of the league. ... But when I’ve talked to him, he’s kept his mind right, and keeps working, and now he’s in a spot that he gets to play a lot and he’s got a big responsibility in the way that we perform. I’m happy for him, for sure.”
On Wednesday night, Mykhailiuk scored a career-high 28 points for the Jazz in a 114-103 loss to the Detroit Pistons. His previous NBA career-best of 27 was set last year with the Jazz and it matched his collegiate career-high of 27 from Kansas. So getting over that number was an elusive feat.
“Svi’s been been really steady for us over his time here,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “I mean steady in terms of his approach, his professionalism, understanding where he is in his career and how he can play off the other guys.”
That steady approach is not something that Hardy says without really meaning it. It’s a marker of who Mykhailiuk is, it’s how his reputation has allowed him to stay in the NBA, it’s one of the main reasons the Jazz wanted to give him a shot and it’s something that the Jazz’s young core should pay real attention to.
He has earned the respect of the coaching staff and the rest of his teammates by being the consummate professional, always diligently preparing with scouting reports, always going hard in practice, always giving maximum effort in the weight room, his individual work and into the minutes he’s given on game days. Even so, he’s always calm and focused.
You’d hardly ever know that every season he’s been fighting for his NBA life.
“Desperation is a heck of a thing,” Hardy said. “I think he models really good professional behavior for our young players, because Svi is in a moment where, like you look at his contract and he’s playing for something. The way he carries himself, the way he interacts with all of his teammates, he would never let you know that there’s that desperation. He doesn’t make it about himself. He really gives himself to the group. And I think that’s something that we can all take from Svi.”
The Jazz’s young players have recently been showing a lot of flashes, here and there, of what they could be capable of. But consistency with everything, including approach to the game, is going to be crucial in their ability to create longevity in the NBA. With that longevity also comes the realization that you are never finished trying to get better.
Even during a loss in Detroit, there were moments of incremental growth being displayed by the likes of Ace Bailey and Walter Clayton Jr., growth that needs to be appreciated and built upon.
And for a small moment, Mykhailiuk could enjoy that for the first time since Nov. 17, 2017 — in a Kansas game against San Diego State — he was able to score more than 27 points. He was still getting better and doing more and building on what came before.