Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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"I can say this that we haven't made a call, all summer long, initiating contact to trade Andrei Kirilenko. Have we fielded calls? Yes. Have we listened to things, but that's our responsibility and the responsibility is to make our team better. Our objective starting this summer, and during the summer, during the fall, is not to trade Andrei Kirilenko." said Jazz VP Kevin O'Connor
"But yet his name is out there and there are several....and its pretty far down the road as far as a package that could happen?" asked Tom Kirkland
"I think it was pretty far down the road, for the media. Where it gets to, from, in actuality, you know you hear these things all the time, it was very specific obvioiusly, so there's credence obviously to some of that stuff, again, I just want to repeat that our objective is to make our team better, it's not to trade Andrei Kirilenko."
Tom asks. "It's interesting, I talked to Andrei Friday, and we texted back and forth, talked to him on he phone as well, talked to Marc Fleischer his agent and they, I know Andrei was broadsided by it, I know him pretty well, He said 'I gotta go call my agent about this' and Fleischer said essentially the same thing...Do these things happen without these guys knowing?"
"I think these things happen in about 15 minutes and then you've got about four months of putting it all back together if it doesn't happen. Somebody obviously leaked a lot of things out there, you know a lot of things that weren't true."
"Can you guarantee that AK won't be traded by tomorrow's Jazz Media Day?" asked Tom Kirkland "I can't guarantee, I mean we've been in discussions over the last 48 hours to 72 hours about some of our other players too. I mean, it just happens at this time of the year, it seems like everybody waits until the end and then gets in conversations. The Al Jefferson thing, the only difference between that, and maybe this was the fact that Minnesota and us kept out mouths shut about it, so nobody knew about it until it happened. And I can tell you this, there are five or six things that have probably happened over the past 72 hours that if they had got in the papers people would of said Ooh, look at that, what about that. You know some you say no to, some you listen to and some you say I'll get back to you, some you say that's not the right deal, it's just that time of year. We've said YES to nothing and I think that is important to know." Said Kevin O'Connor.
