Plan on Rocky Mountain Revue next year

TAYLORSVILLE — The Rocky Mountain Revue may live to see another day after all.

Though the buzz all week around Salt Lake Community College was this year might be the last for the Jazz-hosted summer league, Jazz basketball operations senior vice president Kevin O'Connor suggested otherwise on the final night of the 2007 Revue.

"It's a go next year unless something happened with the (NBA)," O'Connor said Friday. "We would hope that we're able to keep it."

Competition from the league-sponsored NBA Summer League in Las Vegas has caused the six-night Revue to downsize in recent years, with just seven teams — up one, with the addition of Chicago, from a year ago, but down four from 2004 — playing a total of 16 games in '07.

The Jazz were the only Western Conference club not to send a team this year to Vegas, where 21 NBA franchises and one nation (China) were represented.

Still, the Jazz very much prefer to keep their own cozy little league in the same market that it's been since being born in 1984.

"We want to keep it as long as it's viable," O'Connor said. "We think it's great for the community. It gets our rookies out in front of (Jazz fans). It gets (the rookies) to be able to live in Salt Lake for a week or so playing basketball.

"All indications," the Jazz basketball boss added before Utah closed the Revue with a 78-60 loss to the Bulls, "are that all of the teams that were here have certainly enjoyed the basketball, enjoyed playing here, enjoyed playing in front of the fans — and they (almost all) seemed to indicate that they wanted to come back, even if they (also) go Vegas next season."

BIG DEAL: Jazz second-round draft choice Kyrylo Fesenko was the beneficiary Friday of a postgame tutorial session with retired Jazz center Mark Eaton.

The 20-year-old 7-footer from Ukraine, however, didn't seem quite clued in on Eaton's accomplished career.

"I don't know who is he," Fesenko said.

Informed the 7-4 Eaton was an NBA All-Star back in the day, Fesenko smiled and nodded as if something perhaps had gotten lost in translation.

"That's good for him?" he asked.

Fesenko, incidentally, said he will remain in the United States until learning whether the Jazz plan to buy him out of his contract with his Ukrainian club and sign him to a deal of their own.

That's not likely to be addressed until sometime next week at the earliest.

MIHM TO L.A.: Chris Mihm, a center in whom the Jazz are thought to have had some degree of free-agent interest, decided to return to the Los Angeles Lakers for what the Los Angeles Times reported is a two-year deal worth $5 million.

Mihm missed all of last season with reconstructive ankle surgery, one reason Utah would have been reluctant to sign him.

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com