<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><span id="slt_site"><span id="slt_article">After Round 1 of the latest Russian Rifle vs. McLeansboro Mauler showdown, Andrei Kirilenko's already on the ropes, seeing and talking double, and blabbering nonsense. Jerry Sloan absolutely slaughtered him at Monday's Jazz media day, not by criticizing Kirilenko, but by handling rapid-fire questions openly and deftly, giving thorough answers that were at least partially believable and reasonable, even. Kirilenko, on the other hand, was a disaster, stumbling and bumbling around, contradicting himself on multiple occasions, and breaking a team record for total number of "no comments" uttered in a single interview session. Most of us lost count after about 50. As he was peppered by </span></span><span id="slt_site"><span id="slt_article">inquiries from reporters, who to their credit did not accept or settle for the forward's opaque, bogus, evasive, disingenuous responses, Kirilenko finally reached for the absurd. He blamed the media for the dust up. Sloan was accountable and courageous enough to blame himself, at least in part, for a coach-player dispute that reared its head more than a few times last season, and most notably in the playoffs, when Kirilenko broke down at a team practice after playing minimal minutes against Houston. "I don't always make the right decisions," Sloan said. "I have to blame myself for Andrei's failure to be able to play, at times. Maybe I haven't handled him the way he'd like to be, and done the right things." Sloan added: "I'm going to coexist [with Kirilenko]. That's my job. My job is to help a player become a better player. If he has problems, I want to help him work through those problems." He said other things, too, such as: "I want to win." And: "We have to get this thing cleared up so we can play well." And: "We'd like to see him comfortable and do the things he does well." And: "I will do what it takes to win. I'll go out on State Street and give [Andrei] a hug. I don't always get it done the right way. . . . [But] we'll fight like hell for you." In a quiet moment, after most reporters had left the Jazz practice facility, Sloan shifted the earnestness meter into overdrive, saying he spent many solitary hours sitting on his back porch at the farm in Southern Illinois over the offseason, listening to the coyotes howl and reflecting on the mistakes he's made, including some of his handling of Kirilenko. "Nobody's harder on me than me," he said. "I never have been pleased . . ."</div></span></span></p> <span id="slt_site"><span id="slt_article">Source: Salt Lake Tribune</span></span></p>
