International players give Jazz communication issues

Jerry Sloan closes in on his target, ready to give the 19-year-old from Serbia-Montenegro some pre-practice grief over his fresh buzz cut.

"That's a dollar haircut," Sloan says with his John Deere drawl.

Sasha Pavlovic stares at the farmer-coach from southern Illinois intently, seemingly uncertain as to just what Sloan is trying to tell him.

A moment or so passes, and — one more crack later — the words finally register. A sheepish smile spreads across Pavlovic's baby face. "Ha, ha, Coach," his expression says. "I get it."

"He understood — when I told him he paid too much money for it," Sloan laughs.

With Serbian the primary language for Montenegrin swingman Pavlovic, Spanish the first language of point guard Raul Lopez and Russian still the preferred language for small forward Andrei Kirilenko, communication issues may at times this season prove problematic for the increasingly international Jazz.

"Our team is almost like the United Nations right now," assistant coach Gordie Chiesa said.

Considering fluently bilingual point guard Carlos Arroyo hails from Puerto Rico and shooting guard Raja Bell is a native of the Virgin Islands, basketball really does appear to have no borders in Utah these days.

The game itself, though, seems to share a common language — allowing a team of men from different nations, and in some cases different worlds, to somehow all understand each other.

Usually.

"Sometimes I don't understand when the guys (are) talking to each other and I just (over)heard something," said Kirilenko, a member of the Russian National Team about to begin his third NBA season.

"Sometimes," said Lopez, a Spaniard who has spent only about a year in the United States, "I can't understand some jokes, some expressions."

But hoops? "Basketball is easy for me," Lopez said.

The reason, according to Chiesa: "Basketball is a romantic language.

"What makes it romantic is everyone understands," Chiesa added. "So the way to teach basketball to many of the (players for whom English is a second language) is to use your hands, and your expressions."

Lots of gesturing. Body language. Eye contact.