Utah Jazz: Koufos still learning basketball

PORTLAND, Ore. — At the tender age of 20, he's still learning the game.

Missing summer league because of a hand injury didn't help in that regard, and mostly watching — rather than playing big minutes for — his Greek national team at the recent FIBA European Championships tournament in Poland evidently wasn't a boost either.

Shoot, even nerves — not to mention being consumed by the desire to meet lofty expectations that inevitably come with standing 7 feet tall and weighing 270 pounds — may play a part.

And finally, there's the matter of a looming $1.2 million contract decision.

Whatever the recipe of reasons conspiring to slow second-year center Kosta Koufos may be, the Jazz haven't at all lost faith in their 2008 first-round NBA draft choice.

"I'm sure he wants to do well," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who has been riding both Koufos and fellow young big Kyrylo Fesenko particularly hard this preseason.

"He (Koufos) wants us to get on him, and get after him, and try to make him better," added Sloan, whose Jazz play their seventh of eight exhibition games tonight at Portland. "I probably do it sometimes a little bit to a fault.

"But he has talent."

Sloan just wants to bring it out, remembering as he does — much like Jazz general manager Kevin O'Connor — that if the kid had stayed at Ohio State he still wouldn't even have started his junior season in college.

"He's basketball young," O'Connor said. "A lot of big guys are. He's got a long way to come."

"He'd be a pretty good college player," Sloan added. "He can react to the ball, block a shot here and there. But there's more to the game than just that."

Therein lies the rub.

"If you're trying to build an expansion team, you can throw guys out there and you have a lot more leeway to let them make some mistakes," Sloan said. "But here we have a lot of pressure on us to win. We're expected to win.

"That's all there is to it — so you don't have 48 minutes to let a guy (learn through trial and error). He's got to sit on that bench and be focused on what's going on out on the floor, then when he gets out there just transition to it."