The Jazz vs. Fesenko

The Jazz and Kyrylo Fesenko may be headed for a standoff.
And that’s even after the team on Friday exercised its third-year, $870,000 option for next season on Fesenko’s current rookie contract.
Herein lies the problem:
The Jazz, after picking up the option, will want, perhaps even expect, Fesenko to join them for the Orlando Pro Summer League – which features five games from Utah from July 6-10, plus a few days’ worth of training camp sessions in Orlando beforehand.
It can only aid his development and the growth of his all-around game, they believe.
Fesenko, however, spoke the day after the Jazz’s season ended in late April with a first-round playoff series loss to the Los Angeles Lakers about how he planned to play this offseason exclusively for his Ukrainian national team.
No summer league, no matter what.
The 7-foot-1 center also addressed how he hasn’t played internationally for his native country the past two summer, and how missing another would harm his standing in Ukraine.
At the time, the Jazz still hadn’t announced their decision not to host their annual Rocky Mountain Revue at Salt Lake Community College in mid-to-late July – and they might have understood Fesenko missing that summer league, in which he’s taken part the past two years, in favor of national-team activities.
Now, however, the Revue is no more – at least for this summer – and the Jazz instead are headed to Florida.
The summer league there starts and ends much earlier in July, and Fesenko’s national-team obligations are not scheduled to get under way until after the Jazz would be finished in Orlando.
No scheduling conflict, in other words.
Still, Fesenko’s representative, Stu Lash, suggested Friday that what the Jazz want may not be what Fesenko also wants.
“Right now he’s not coming back (to the United States) in the summer, and he’ll training with national team in Ukraine,” Lash said.
Lash did say he was open to discussing the subject with Jazz brass.
If the Fesenko camp sticks with its current stance, though, things could get interesting.
Totally different circumstances because of unsigned contractual status at the time, granted, but if anyone needs to know how coach Jerry Sloan feels about his young players missing summer league, they need only ask C.J. Miles.
So should Fesenko go to Orlando? Or isn’t it that big of a deal?
You make the call …

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