Uncertain future for Jazz center

He is the last man standing, the sole player left from the Jazz's 1997 and '98 NBA Finals team.

How that ever happened baffles Greg Ostertag.

"I really, honestly, don't know why I'm still around," he says. "I guess they really like me."

Ostertag laughs.

Not heartily, but with a singular chortle, similar to the sound you may have just made.

Rarely one with elevated approval ratings — in part due to consistent inconsistency, in part because of admittedly untapped potential — the Jazz's 7-foot-2 starting center does not know how much longer he will call Utah home.

A free agent at the end of this season, Ostertag isn't even sure he will last past the league's Feb. 19 trade deadline — now, less than two weeks away.

"Until they call me up and say, 'We've traded you,' " he said, "I'm a Jazz-team guy until the end of the season."

Beyond then, Ostertag has no idea what the summer may hold.

"I'll be honest with you: I don't know," he said. "I'm gonna look at things. I'm gonna look at my future, and what's best for me. If the Jazz happen to be a part of that, so be it."

He says they may want him back: "From what I hear, yeah. But, you know, you never know."

All Ostertag knows for certain — contrary to what some speculate — is he fully intends to play next season, and well beyond.

"I'm like everybody else: I have my ups and downs, days I don't like to practice," he said. "But I enjoy playing basketball. There's nothing like it when . . . the crowd goes wild."

The issue of a return to Utah, then, is fraught with uncertainty.

By no means is Ostertag proclaiming he wants out: "This doesn't mean that I want to be traded right away," he said, "or I'm for-sure leaving."

Yet if the Jazz have little or no interest in continuing the relationship — remember Bryon Russell, even Karl Malone? — Ostertag's own desires are diminished.

Moreover, a part of him wonders what it would be like elsewhere.