"And the second thing that's really helped," Olson said, "is that we did have some good seat locations to sell. In the past, (such as) '97-'98, the team was obviously a very good team, but all the seats were sold (going into the season), especially the good seats. There had been a decline over the past couple of years in season tickets, so seats have opened up."

No longer.

Even those easy chairs behind the public address announcer/ TV play-by-play people at center court — the ones for $700 a game but only if you buy four of them for the season — are 100 percent renewed from last year. The $400-a-night VIP front-row chairs and the $130 down-low seats behind the baskets are all gone.

The Jazz are, however, about to start selling their mini-packages, 10 and 20 games, all likely upstairs, and in a few weeks, they'll concentrate on their group sales, all on high. Single-game tickets, what's available, go on sale Oct. 1.

ANOTHER 40 PERCENT: Utah's sharp-shooting center, Mehmet Okur, is at least partly responsible for a big sales increase in a product he endorses in Turkey. A member of the Turkish national team that will play in Eurobasket 2007 next week, Okur has for several months endorsed a fruit drink known as "Dimes." After Okur toured the production plant recently, Ozan Diren, a member of the Dimes board of directors, told his Web site (memo13.com), "Dimes had always been the first preference for mothers and children. However, with Memo we were extremely pleased with increasement in the number of teenagers that have also started to prefer and use Dimes. During our past six months together, Dimes has increased its sales 40 percent." Dimes extended Okur's contract.

MALONE COURT: A renovated basketball court at Louisiana Tech University, alma mater for former Jazz great Malone and current Jazzman Paul Millsap, will be named Karl Malone Court. Malone donated $300,000 toward the project this summer.

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