Jazz prepared to do sales job

Twenty-seven percent of 248 players questioned by Sports Illustrated earlier this year identified the Jazz as the NBA team for which they'd least like to play.

One need not remind Kevin O'Connor of precise poll results before he offers a response.

"I'll take that," the Jazz's basketball operations senior vice president said, "and say, 'OK, you know what? I'm going to go after the other 73 percent of the guys.'

"That's how I approach it."

He has little other choice.

It was a year-and-a-half before O'Connor was hired in 1999 that Rony Seikaly wormed his way out of coming to Utah in a trade. It was in 1997 that Derek Harper, before later apologizing if he offended anyone, told ESPN, "There was a Utah deal, but you go live in Utah. Nothing against Utah or their team, but I don't want to live there." And it was back in 1994 that Brian Williams, a k a Bison Dele, said Salt Lake "smelled like brine shrimp" and added he would rather play in the CBA than come to Utah.

The attitude, in other words, is nothing new.

So be it, O'Connor suggests.

"I think there's a grouping of guys that would say, 'You know what, I don't want to go to Utah,'" he said. "That's fine — as long as there's enough of a grouping that we can go out and sign to make us a very competitive team.

"That's what we look for."

With NBA's summer free-agency market having opened late Friday night, and Utah shopping for both a shot-blocking center and a sharp-shooting guard, that's how the Jazz will try to fight the perception problems stacked against them.

They do so, though, thinking it was a battle they already had won once.

"I think we've proven that there are a number of very good NBA players who would want to come to Utah," team president Denny Haslam said, "and Corey Maggette is a good example of that, and Jason Terry is another good example."

The Jazz got Maggette and Terry, both restricted free agents at the time, to sign contract offer sheets in 2003 — and both would have voluntarily come to Utah had their own teams at the time not matched proposal terms.

The SI poll, however, proves the Utah stigma lives on.

Next-closest in the survey was Toronto at just 16 percent, and the next-closest United States-based team was Atlanta with 10 percent.