Utah Jazz: Team needs Kyrylo Fesenko to play some serious ball

DENVER — He's a happy-go-lucky sort, usually smiling and joking and acting as if those around him perhaps could stand to realize and even accept that life is way too short not to soak it for all it's worth.

No one with the Jazz, however, wants to see or hear the class clown in Kyrylo Fesenko for the coming week or month or however much longer Utah manages to remain alive in the ongoing NBA playoffs. "I hope so," Jazz point guard Deron Williams said when asked Monday if the importance and consequence of postseason play will force Fesenko to take things a bit more seriously for at least the short-term future.

"He's been great lately," Williams added. "I'll just try to stay on him, and keep him focused."

Most times, dependence on the 23-year-old Ukrainian backup center would not be nearly so dire.

But with starting center Mehmet Okur going down with a surgery-necessitating ruptured Achilles tendon Saturday night in Game 1 of the Jazz's first-round NBA Western Conference playoff clash with the Denver Nuggets, the Jazz will need something — hopefully for them more than he's ever provided previously — from Fesenko if they're to have any hope of surviving the best-of-seven series.

And maybe even beyond this postseason.

"It's good experience for Fes," Williams said. "Because Memo's injury is a tough one. Who knows when he's gonna be back — you know, at the start of the season, or what? And Fes might be the guy that gets the call."

Fesenko — who excused himself to spit out his gum before talking to reporters Monday, saying, "Just trying to be respectful" after he did — will be a restricted free agent this summer if the Jazz make him a qualifying offer after the season.

And if the Jazz ultimately re-sign him, he could be counted to contribute major minutes should Okur not be ready for the start of the 2010-11 season.

Pending contract issues, however, took a back seat in Fesenko's mind to much-more pressing matters Monday. "I can't think about it," he said when asked what the offseason may bring.

"I talked to my agent. I talked to A.K. (teammate Andrei Kirilenko). I talked to everybody about it," he added, who at $870,000 is the Jazz's lowest-paid non-rookie this season. "Everybody's telling me, 'Fes, think only about tonight's game. There is nothing else. Just tonight's game, 48 minutes, Nene.'"