Esko Ensio ”Sir Emal” Karhunen (4 January 1928 – 8 March 2016) was a Finnish

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

player and contributor. The Karhunen spent his whole SM-sarja career at

Pantterit Pantterit (English: ''Panthers'') is a basketball club from Helsinki, Finland. The club was formed in 1938 and it has won the men's Finnish championship title for 14 times making it the most successful team in Finnish basketball history. Pantter ...

basketball club, and its predecessors, in Helsinki, and was in a record 13 Finnish championship-winning teams. He was also capped eight times for the Finland men's national team and represented his country at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. After his career as a player, Karhunen was a basketball contributor in Pantterit. He organized a practise tournament which was played between 1971–2000 and brought the Harlem Globetrotters to Finland. Karhunen was inducted into the

Finnish Basketball Hall of Fame The Finnish Basketball Hall of Fame is a hall of fame that is the highest honor that is bestowed upon people that have impacted the sport of basketball in Finland. New Hall of Fame members are chosen by the Hall's board of experts, coming from t ...

in 2012. Karhunen died on 8 March 2016 in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

at 88 years of age.

References

External links

* * * 1928 births 2016 deaths Basketball people from Helsinki Basketball players at the 1952 Summer Olympics Finnish men's basketball players Olympic basketball players for Finland {{Finland-basketball-bio-stub