Russia won the European Championships against a tough field of European teams — much tougher than anything the United States faced over here where the only tough team would have been Argentina had they suited up their top players.
Andrei Kirilenko played stellar for the Russians and was awarded the MVP of the European Championships for his effort.
With all that said, though, he is only the fourth option offensively on a talented young Utah Jazz team, though he is most likely the first option on the defensive end.
Will the Gold Medal and the MVP award go to his head?
Most likely.
Will other teams be willing to take a chance on a guy who is known to whine if he doesn’t get the offensive touches that he thinks he deserves?
There should be a lot of lower echelon teams that should give it a shot. The top ones shouldn’t even consider messing up their chemistry to include someone who may or may not play nice with the other players on the team.
Since being disgruntled with his lack of playing time during the playoffs, Andrei Kirilenko has been the object of numerous trade rumors including a recent one with a swap of Shawn Marion for Andrei that was evidently discussed briefly over the summer.
The big question is if the Utah Jazz should trade the forward after he showed what he could do in the European Championships — if they should try to parlay his stellar play during the summer into a better player than they might have otherwise gotten — or if they should take advantage of the good player that he obviously is and use him to their advantage in their quest for an NBA championship.
Only time will tell on which choice they pick, but Utah Jazz fans are not too forgiving, and I think that almost all of us would like to see what value we can get for the European Championship’s Most Valuable Player.
