Questions Abound About Kirilenko

SALT LAKE CITY —  After his first practice with the Utah Jazz, new Russian big man Andrei Kirilenko changed into a black T-shirt with a yellow question mark on front.

Talk about symbolism. Little is known about this international man of mystery.

Now that he’s finally here, at least half the guessing is over for curious Jazz fans. Kirilenko was in uniform as summer camp opened last week, with plenty of visual impressions.

As promised, he’s tall. The first-round draft pick from two years ago is a solid 6-foot-9, but he’s also quite slender at 205 pounds.

That frame doesn’t concern the 20-year-old Kirilenko, who played for Russia at the Sydney Olympics. Asked if he’s ready for the NBA, he smiled and said, “I will try to play now. I want to play now.”

How about that haircut? Kirilenko’s mane has rows of blond spikes that make him look like a basketball-playing version of bad guy Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV.”

While searching for the right words to answer questions, his blue eyes darted about, suggesting a boyish charm that couldn’t have been forced, considering the pimples on his cheeks.

He promised to work as hard on basketball as he does on his so-so English.

“I’m ready,” Kirilenko said. “If the coach says ‘yes,’ then OK, no problem. It’s not hard for me. But you know, my English, it’s not excellent.”

Don’t worry about Kirilenko forgetting his place on the team. Asked about playing with John Stockton and Karl Malone, he proved he knows who the superstars are, even as he stumbled through the presentation.

“I think John and Karl are one of the best two players in the world,” Kirilenko said.

Fair enough. And now that we know how Kirilenko looks and sounds, only one question remains.

How’s his game?

The answer: Nobody knows yet.

“Well, he’s tall, and he’s a nice-looking young man,” coach Jerry Sloan said. “When you look at his abilities, yeah, he’s got certain things, but I haven’t seen the basketball part of it.”

Kirilenko spent his first week in Utah doing drills and scrimmages with the team’s other youngsters and invited free agents, but Sloan said it takes more than one week of summer camp to evaluate a player.

“It takes about three years to find out who a guy really is, if he can play, how he’s going to be affected by 28 different teams in the league and the things they do,” Sloan said.

Kirilenko was one of Utah’s three first-round picks in the 1999 NBA draft, along with shooting guard Quincy Lewis and forward Scott Padgett.

While Lewis and Padgett have logged two years in the NBA, Kirilenko has spent three seasons playing for CSKA Moscow of the North European Basketball League. He joined his first team, Spartak of St. Petersburg, at age 15.

Kirilenko has a reputation as a slasher, able to cut through defenders to score. He’s also said to be a good shooter, but his beanpole body was a defensive liability against bigger players in Sydney.

So far, however, the Jazz like what they see.

“He hopefully has a lot of athletic ability and I would think that would make him a real prospect,” Sloan said.