Jazz working on Harpring

The morning after the Jazz ended their season at 41-41, out of the NBA playoffs for a third straight year, basketball operations senior vice president Kevin O'Connor made no effort to keep secret what is at the top of his summer to-do list.

That would be trying to re-sign starting small forward Matt Harpring, an unrestricted free agent now that his four-year contract in Utah comes to a close.

"Absolutely," O'Connor said as Harpring and teammates cleaned their lockers Thursday at the Delta Center. "Matt's our top priority. Period. Let's put it that way, let's not go any further than that.

"We would like to have him back."

Getting a deal done even with one of his own free agents, however, is another matter altogether.

O'Connor discovered that the hard way attempting to re-sign a couple other key components in recent offseasons, namely forward Donyell Marshall in 2002 and swingman Raja Bell in 2005.

"When we tried to sign Donyell, Donyell decided to go to Chicago for less money. It befuddled me," O'Connor said. "I couldn't understand it, because he liked it here. Raja Bell last year . . . wanted to leave. He wanted to go to Phoenix and play with Steve Nash."

Harpring, for his part, doesn't seem sure what he wants.

The Atlanta-area native plans to meet sometimes next week with his agent, Atlanta-based Richard Howell, and proceed from there.

"Honestly, we've been putting this off all year," Harpring said. "I told my agent I didn't want to talk to him until the end of the year. . . . Just didn't want to have any distraction."

The gritty 30-year-old veteran said he doesn't "know where the Jazz are, what they're thinking." But he by no means has ruled out returning to Utah.

"I do think this team has the potential to be a good team," said Harpring, a Georgia Tech product who's also played in Orlando, Cleveland and Philadelphia. "If I felt we were going in the wrong direction, then that would be a different story. But I think we are going in the right direction. And it's always fun to a part of something when you're building it."

Harpring will weigh several factors before signing a new contract, which by league rule cannot happen until July 12 at the earliest.

(Teams can begin negotiating free agents and oral commitments can be made, however, as early as July 1.)

One is the value of another long-term contract.