Araujo's stay with Jazz over?

Indications are that second-round draft pick Kyrylo Fesenko will sign his Utah Jazz contract this morning and then be on a plane before noon bound for his home in Ukraine for a couple of weeks.

But an always-cautious Jazz senior vice president of basketball operations Kevin O'Connor said Tuesday that, while he doesn't foresee any sticking points in that timetable, not everything was yet ready for a Fesenko signing early today.

"I don't know," O'Connor said, refusing to say whether he was waiting on medical reports or final contract details.

It will be a multi-year contract that Fesenko's agent, Jason Levien, said is guaranteed, and Levien seemed satisfied Tuesday afternoon that things would be completed with Fesenko's signing today.

With the decision to bring the 7-foot-1, 20-year-old project center onto the Jazz roster this season — for a half-million-dollar buyout with likely some added considerations for his Ukrainian pro club, as opposed to a $1 million buyout next season — last season's No. 3 center Hafa Araujo, the BYU product, is having to look elsewhere.

Araujo's agent, Jim McDowell, said Araujo, a 6-foot-11 unrestricted free agent, has received an invitation from the Jazz to come to their fall training camp, but the offer had no guarantees.

Unless the Jazz make a trade that changes their inside lineup, McDowell considers it "unlikely" that Araujo will be in that Jazz camp come October, where the agent assumes his client would be more injury protection for the Jazz than a viable candidate for a roster spot. "It makes sense to look elsewhere," he said.

McDowell said Araujo, a 2004 first-round pick by Toronto who was traded to Utah last summer for Kris Humphries and Robert Whaley, is to the point in his career where he needs to get significant playing time to reach his potential, now that he's sculpted his body over the last year.

McDowell said even if another NBA team offered Araujo what looked like a No. 12 spot on its roster, he might instead opt to play in Europe just to get on the court enough to further his career. "That might not be an optimal situation" for him, the agent said of an NBA end-of-the-bench job. "It would not help his career." McDowell assumes that minutes on the court this season, even if they're in Europe, will put Araujo "in a stronger position than he is now" to seek another NBA deal.

He missed much of the Rocky Mountain Revue this summer with a groin pull that had bothered him since the playoffs and was aggravated by Revue camp drills before play even began. McDowell said, "That didn't help" Araujo's cause with the Jazz or with other NBA teams that were scouting the Revue because no one has seen him play extended minutes with that reshaped body that he is still working on now in a conditioning program in Santa Barbara, Calif.

McDowell said the only basketball Araujo has played this summer was in the Revue and that he did not participate in Basketball Without Borders in his native Brazil, as an NBA press release had said. The injury, which is healing, is also a reason he will not play for Brazil in the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifying tournament later this month in Las Vegas.

Araujo averaged 8.9 minutes in the 28 games he played with Utah last season but spent 19 games on the Jazz's inactive list and did not play though healthy in 35. At Toronto, he started 75 games over two years, averaging just under three points and three rebounds.

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E-mail: lham@desnews.com