Utah Jazz: Korolev still has NBA dreams

He was a lottery pick, taken No. 12 overall in the 2005 NBA Draft — the same draft that nine selections earlier landed the Jazz point guard Deron Williams — despite his having just turned 18 years old at the time.

But Yaroslav Korolev's career with the Los Angeles Clippers didn't exactly pan out as planned.

He appeared in 24 games as a rookie in 2005-06, which was fully expected to be a developmental season. But the lanky 6-foot-9 small forward never did turn into the rotation regular the Clippers had envisioned, and instead he played just 10 games in his second NBA season.

Career average to date: precisely 1.1 points per game.

Yet Korolev was in the Clippers' initial plans for last season.

And then — after point guard Shaun Livingston's devastating knee injury prompted the signing of veteran Brevin Knight, and power forward Elton Brand's ruptured Achilles tendon led to the signings of Ruben Patterson and Josh Powell — he found himself out of a roster spot-sapped picture.

So Korolev returned in December to his native Russia and played instead for his hometown Moscow Dynamo, thinking the whole time about an eventual return to the NBA. And now he is a free agent in the Jazz's Rocky Mountain Revue camp, now just 21 and hoping to salvage what once was at his fingertips.

"It's the best league in the world, and everybody's trying to go here. Me, too," Korolev said Tuesday, before the second day of practice for an NBA summer league that gets under way Friday at Salt Lake Community College.

"Especially at my age," he added, "I still have a lot of years in front of me, so I'm gonna do my best to get back here as early as I can."

The Jazz are willing to give him the chance, and it's no charity gesture.

"He's got a lot of basketball skills," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said.

"I think he's a kid that can really shoot the basketball," general manager Kevin O'Connor added. "We want to see if he's expanded his game a little bit."

The Jazz aren't sure what went wrong in L.A., where perhaps his game simply wasn't NBA-ready, and maybe expectations were warped by the pressures of being drafted so high.

They really don't care, either.

"He's got a blank page with us," O'Connor said. "He's a 21-year-old ... that's coming in to look for a spot. That's how we look at it. I want to see who he is now."

"A lot of guys you make mistakes on, but that doesn't mean they can't play — if you work at it hard enough and understand what's going on," Sloan added. "We'll just take a look at it and see what's here."

Sloan said Korolev must learn "how we're gonna play, not to bury your head, and go one-on-one."

Korolev sounds willing to try whatever it takes.