<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">For the second straight year, and this time apparently on purpose, the Utah Jazz will play a seven-game preseason schedule with an out-of-the-country opener. There shouldn't be as much difficulty with the opening game this year, though. The Jazz will open the 2005 preseason at Air Canada Centre Oct. 12 against the Toronto Raptors. Last season the Jazz were supposed to open in Moscow against CSKA, the Russian Central Army team, but about three weeks before the game it was postponed by the NBA, due to concern about Chechen extremists' terrorist acts that included a deadly attack on a school and the downing of two airliners. The Jazz meeting with forward Andrei Kirilenko's former club cut the 2004 preseason schedule to seven games from the usual eight. It was said last September that the CSKA game might be played this season, but Jazz spokeswoman Cindy Edman said there was no mention this summer of putting it on Utah's 2005 exhibition schedule, though it may still come up in a future preseason. NBA teams do their own preseason scheduling, but the NBA would set up such an international game, Edman said.</div> <div align="center">Source </div>
