Jazz may be without their All-Star forward for 6 weeks
Kirilenko out at least 5 games; Sloan tries to balance his lineup
Matt Harpring is in — in, that is, for a stretch in which he and the rest of the Jazz could experience an array of ups and down without their All-Star forward.
"Any time you miss a good player like that, it's going to hurt us," said Harpring, one of the Jazz's co-captains. "But injuries are definitely a part of the game, and we've got to learn to pick up where we left off and keep going."
Or maybe that's not such a good idea.
Utah has lost three of its last four games, two last week to previously winless Chicago and New Orleans and one by the embarrassing score of 109-76 at San Antonio last Saturday.
Which is why Jazz coach Jerry Sloan can't be sure what he's in for over the coming weeks, especially with Kirilenko, the NBA's leading shot blocker and a 14.8 points-per-game scorer, out indefinitely.
"I'm not really concerned about who starts," said Sloan, who declined Monday to say if Harpring — as many expect — would take Kirilenko's spot at small forward in the Jazz's starting lineup for tonight's Delta Center game against Phoenix. "I'm concerned about who competes.
Sloan, though, seems to wonder just how much control he has over an 8-6 team that has gone 2-5 since starting 6-1.
"I think I know what's going on, but we'll not talk about that," Sloan said before eventually expounding a bit.
"There's a lot of things they can correct. I can't correct them," he added. "All I can do is look and see what's going on out there. . . . There are some things they can do as a group that will give them a chance to win, (but) right now, they get pushed around and shoved around a little bit."
It was someone getting pushed into Kirilenko that has the 23-year-old Russian sidelined.
An MRI exam confirmed Kirilenko did not completely tear the medial collateral ligament (MCL) in his right knee when San Antonio's Beno Udrih collided with him last Saturday, the Jazz said Monday.
The test did, however, show Kirilenko has what Jazz trainer Gary Briggs called a "grade-2" sprain of the MCL — one-degree worse than originally diagnosed by a Spurs doctor Saturday.
The Jazz could not offer a precise timetable for Kirilenko's return, but at least one teammate shed some light.
"I know how it feels to be Andrei," said Harpring, who missed more than half of last season after knee surgery. "In fact, I know how it feels to be a little worse — because I was out half of last year, and he's only out for 3-to-6 weeks."
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