Counterpoint: Kirilenko

TORONTO — Swatting them away as if he were sliding over from the weak side to reject a layup inside, Andrei Kirilenko on Friday deftly deflected disparaging remarks made Thursday by Jazz owner Larry H. Miller.

"I understand Larry, and I'm very respectful to him, because he's really a guy who's worried about the team," Kirilenko said while sitting in the visiting lockerroom at Air Canada Centre prior to Utah's 102-94 victory over Toronto. "And, I actually worry about the team. And I don't want to become a player who don't give a (care) about anything what's going — just take your paycheck, go home.

"I worry about it. That's why I worry about my game."

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan did some rejecting of his own Friday.

"We're not looking to trade anybody," he said. "I will say this: When you come into this business, I think everybody is susceptible to the possibility of a trade. If they aren't, then we aren't trying to do our job to try to make the team better. But, on the other hand, I don't have any intentions of trading Andrei. My job is to get him to play well."

Miller was highly critical of Kirilenko during his weekly radio appearance on KZN 1280-AM, saying he "cringes" when Kirilenko takes shots and that forward from Russia was "on thin ice" as a combined result of poor play and previous public comments about wanting a bigger role on the team.

Kirilenko did defend the timing of his remarks.

"I didn't start talk about it when we were winning games ... But we start losing games, so that's why I kind of worrying about it," he said. "Because I see the problem: In the future, like when we don't have anything, I cannot fire it up from nothing. Because I don't feel that kind of confidence to do something. "I never did, like, explode, and I never get crazy after one thing. But when it goes, it goes, it goes. Even metal can break."

Kirilenko did, though, did agree with Miller's assessment that he's not living up to usual standards of play.

"I'm playing on my rookie level — like, you come to the league, you hustle for every ball, you're running, but you don't get any passes. You earn all your shots by yourself," he said. "But if you want me to be one of the leaders, who plays on the level which I can play, you (need) more attention (in game-planning). It's not about shots."

Kirilenko suggested his needs are more about simply being involved, getting touches of the ball and being given an opportunity "to create" — and that he's willing to do that within the context of his coach's offense, as he has since growing up in Russia.