Utah Jazz notebook: Okur misses game from flu-like symptoms

The folks back home missed out on a chance to see one native son play against the other.

Starting center Mehmet Okur missed Wednesday night's win over Toronto and, according to a Jazz spokesman, was not planning on traveling with the team to San Antonio for tonight's game against the Spurs.

Okur is out due to "flu-like symptoms," according to the Jazz, but it wasn't immediately known if he has the actual flu and the Jazz did not say if the illness was suspected to be H1NI flu-related.

Okur is the first Jazz player this season to miss a game because of flu-like symptoms.

He did take part in Wednesday's morning shootaround, and afterward said the Utah-Toronto game was being televised live in his native Turkey.

Fellow Turk Hedo Turkoglu of the Raptors did not play in Tuesday's Toronto loss at Denver due to a sore left hip, but he did play Wednesday.

With Okur out, backup Kyrylo Fesenko got his second start of the season.

Fesenko also started when Okur missed an Oct. 30 win over the Los Angeles Clippers due to mild knee and ankle sprains.

PRICE UPDATE: Jazz combo guard Ronnie Price missed a fourth straight game Wednesday due to his sprained left big toe, and he didn't make the trip to San Antonio either.

He's had two MRI exams on the toe in two days this week and visited a specialist Wednesday, but results weren't immediately made known.

Price, who injured the toe at New York on Nov. 10, said the first MRI Monday was taken over a broad area of his foot. The second one Tuesday focused more on the exact area affected by pain "just to get a better picture of what's going on."

After Wednesday's shootaround, Price said medical experts are evaluating the results and determining what needs to be done.

"It's not fun, but it's part of life here. It's part of our job," he said. "Injuries happen, your body gets worn out from when you put stress and consistently play on it, so it's just one of those things that come along with the game."

KORVER BACK: Jazz reserve swingman Kyle Korver returned Tuesday night from a week-long physical rehab stint in California and Wednesday he said he hopes to return in "two weeks tops ... which is ahead of schedule."

But Korver, who underwent arthroscopic surgery Oct. 28 to remove a bone spur from his left knee, couldn't pinpoint precisely when he'll be back.

"It's hard to really say," he said after the team's morning shootaround. "I just want to keep doing more stuff, see how it responds. But I definitely made a lot of progress in the last week."

The Jazz have six more games before the two-week window expires.

Korver said he's back to running, but not jumping, and that his knee still swells a bit following workouts.

He continues to try to break up surgery-related scar tissue in the joint, and said his trip to the Santa Barbara-based P3 Peak Performance Project conditioning center — taken while the Jazz were on a four-game trip back East — was a tremendous help.

"Obviously it's hard to be away from the team, but what can I do on the road, really? You can't do much in the hotels," he said. "So I was out there (in California) and got therapy every day, had amazing workouts every day, and would shoot at night."

Swingman C.J. Miles, meanwhile, hopes to return from thumb surgery sometime in the next few weeks as well.

Contributing: Jody Genessy

e-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com