After a breakout performance for Finland during FIBA EuroBasket, Miikka Muurinen is no longer going to play basketball in the United States.
Muurinen is an 18-year-old forward who was set to enter his senior year of high school next season. But as the youngest player to compete in EuroBasket 2025 earlier this summer, he turned some heads and made a case for why he is also one of the most intriguing NBA prospects in the world.
While he previously played high school basketball for Sunrise Christian Academy in Kansas and AZ Compass Prep in Arizona, fans learned Thursday that Muurinen is heading overseas for the next step of his basketball career.
Finland earned a spot in the semifinals during EuroBasket, finishing with their best placement in tournament history for the nation.
He won the inaugural EuroBasket 2025 Rising Star award for his accomplishments, including a strong performance in a win over Serbia. It was always bizarre to imagine him back in an American high school class room after this:
His mother Jenni Laaksonen, who played college basketball at North Carolina, hinted at two possible destinations for where he can begin his professional career (translated via BasketNews.com):
“Let’s see once the negotiations are finalized and the names are on paper. I’ll just say that Miikka has admired the kind of style, for example in Serbia or at Panathinaikos, since he was a little boy. So, a bit of that more intense kind of play,” Laaksonen told Ilta-Sanomat.
Some fans are speculating that the Serbian team mentioned above as a potential fit is Partizan Belgrade.
To become eligible for the 2026 NBA Draft, he will need papers that indicate he has graduated high school in the next three weeks before the 2025-26 NBA season officially begins. If eventually drafted, he would become just the fourth player from Finland to ever play in the NBA.
Otherwise, as long as he follows the vague NCAA rules for amateurism, he could potentially play college basketball in 2026-27 after spending one year overseas.
He holds offers from Duke, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Arkansas, Indiana, and North Carolina State. Muurinen is considered the No. 13 player in his class, per composite rankings from 247Sports.