Jazz starting center Mehmet Okur is staying with the Jazz, a team spokesman said early tonight.

Okur decided against exercising an early termination option that would have allowed him to get out the final year of his current contract and would have permitted him to entered the NBA's summer shopping market as an unrestricted free agent at 10 p.m. tonight.

He will make $9 million on this season, the last season on a six-year contract.

Okur's agant, Marc Fleischer, flew from Connecticut to Utah on Monday night so he could meet face to face with Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor and discus the possibility of a contract extension.

But with no agreement on an extension reached, Fleischer instead informed the Jazz that Okur would be opting in.