It is a half-hour after the game when Andrei Kirilenko comes to collect his wife, Masha, from the wives' waiting room in the Delta Center, and the first thing he does is begin a rapid-fire discussion of the Jazz's lopsided loss — in Russian. He is animated and smiling and shaking his head as if frustrated. He touches her knee and leans close as if to make sure she is getting this.
I'm the only one not getting this. I have been sitting with Masha — MAH-sha — since the game ended, and we spent halftime and most of the third quarter chatting in English.
"He's talking about the game and why they lost," she says.
Kirilenko looks at me and shrugs. "A bad night," he says.
This is why he is here, for nights like this, to learn against the best. He just watched Vince Carter go off for 41 points. He has played on the same court with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. He has defended Michael Jordan and Grant Hill. Soon he will meet Tim Duncan and David Robinson. Only five years ago the walls of his bedroom in St. Petersburg were covered with posters of these American stars, and now he is playing against them.
"It's like a dream," he says. "When I was younger, it was, whoa, Michael Jordan. But I see I can play with these guys. Sometimes it's not so hard."
As the Player of the Year in Europe and Russia last year, he says he could have commanded $2 million a year, tax-free, if he had remained with his old Russian professional team. Instead, he signed a three-year contract this summer worth $2.7 million to play for the Jazz, who drafted him two years ago.
"The NBA is the best league in the world," he says. "I want to go the hard way. In Russia, I was best player; now I'm bench player."
His NBA adventure has meant a series of challenges that would be traumatic for anyone, yet alone a 20-year-old Russian coming to America for the first time, but he has handled them with grace and ease beyond his years.
"He's been a professional since he was 15," says Jazz assistant trainer Terry Clark. "He's been around the world. It's been pretty easy. It's not like this is his first rodeo. He's done a lot of things on his own. He has been pretty independent."
Learning the lingo
It's easy to forget that Kirilenko is the same age as DeShawn Stevenson, the Jazz player who came straight to the NBA from high school last season. Kirilenko's jump to the NBA from the European professional ranks has been no less dramatic, and it's been accompanied by marriage, his wife's pregnancy and a move to the other side of the world.
"We're moving into our new (condo)," Masha explains. "We slept on the floor our first night there."
"It has five bathrooms with five toilets, and three of them are broken!" he says to me. He turns to Masha with wide eyes, smiling — "We only have two left!"
Kirilenko's transition has been aided by his grasp of the English language, which he learned in school, although the Jazz were uncertain about this at the start. After catching a John Stockton pass for a bucket during an exhibition game, Stockton spoke slowly and methodically to tell Kirilenko, "Nice . . . cut . . . to . . . the . . . bas . . . ket!"
But slow-motion talk has proved unnecessary, unless the lingo and idioms are flying. He says this one perplexed him: "Getchya butt in there!"
After Kirilenko sank a crucial basket late in a game, reporters told him he had made a clutch shot. "What is clutch shot?" he asked. When reporters asked Kirilenko earlier this season what it was like to play with John Stockton, he said, "He has back-head eyes."
"Sometimes when we come out of the huddle, where there's lots of slang, he's not on the same page as the rest of us, but that's understandable," says teammate John Crotty.
What does it mean to "rub off," he has asked. What do you mean "man-to-man" defense? In Russian, the literal translation of "man-to-man" is "personal." To be sure of the defense after a time-out, he will ask a teammate, "Are we personal?"
The Jazz call a defensive switch "help the helper." Says assistant coach Gordie Chiesa, "Andrei took a step back when he heard that one. He said, 'What do you mean?'"
"Andrei understands almost everything," says Masha. "He has trouble with black people because of the slang and because they don't pronounce things."
Says Kirilenko, "Black guys — too hard. I say WHAT?! I hear blah, blah, blah (swear word), blah, blah, blah (swear word)."
On the other hand, he has had the same problem with coach Jerry Sloan when the latter gets on a diatribe. "I say, 'Yes, Coach, I understand one word' " — a basic expletive.
The match game
It helps that Masha is a former English teacher (she occasionally mutters comments under her breath between her husband's sentences to assist me). "Actually, I don't teach him," she says. "We can't be serious for one hour. We start laughing, kissing, cuddling. That's how we end up."
Raised in Moscow, educated in London, Masha speaks fluent English with a British accent. She is eight years older than her husband and an experienced international traveler. She travels to road games with her husband — a practice normally discouraged by Sloan, but under the circumstances it has actually been encouraged.
Masha grew up in affluence, the only child of a Moscow banker and former professional basketball player. Her father, Andrei Lopatov, played for the Russian national team before he retired in 1990, having collected seven European titles, two world championships and an Olympic bronze medal.
Masha recites the similarities between her father and her husband: "Same sport. Same position. Same height. Same slender build. Same shoe size. Same first name. It's very Freudian. I could have imagined marrying anyone, but not a basketball player."
Masha took an undergraduate degree in languages (she knows Spanish as well as English) in Moscow, teaching English part-time at a private school. She earned a master's degree in art in London, with an emphasis in film and video, and later put those skills to use when she became public-relations director and tour manager for Boy Band, the Russian version of the Back Street Boys. She traveled the continent with the band and ran with the fast crowd.
"I was a party girl for 10 years," she says.
Eventually, she started her own company — I.D., a marketing group for sports and entertainment figures and events. Her partner is running the company in Moscow while she lives in the United States. It was that business that brought her together with Kirilenko.
In the genes
Kirilenko grew up in St. Petersburg, the older of two boys in the family. His father, Gennady, was a professional soccer coach but now manages a handball team. His mother, Olga, was a schoolteacher, but before that she was a professional basketball player who gave up the game when Andrei was born.
"At my games, she would say, 'Andrei, baseline! Baseline! Hands up! Hands up!' "
Kirilenko was 7 years old when he was invited to play for a local club team. "I was tall," explains Kirilenko. At 11, he began attending a sports school. At 15, he began his professional career, playing for the hometown team. A year later, he moved to Moscow to play for the national team, living alone in a one-room apartment.
"It was hard," he says. "Cooking. Cleaning room. Not easy like here. You're responsible for yourself. You can't hire anyone to come and clean. Sometimes my aunt helped me do laundry and clean."
Kirilenko met Masha when he was just 18 years old. She was organizing a charity event and the young basketball star was invited to play.
"He was extremely shy, but he was smiling all the time," she says. "He was unbelievably attractive. I think I really like him, but he was only 18. I thought, it's ridiculous. I am eight years older. I'll wait. So I waited." A year later, she had to interview him for another project. She called him and they wound up going to a movie two hours later. The next day, they did an interview, then lunch and dinner and romance.
"I was skipping my work," she says. "Three or four hours at lunch. We spent lots of time in cafes and diners."
Earlier this year, Kirilenko proposed. They married in July, just before he reported to the Jazz. She joined him in Utah a few weeks later. They spent their first few weeks in Salt Lake City living in the Marriott before moving into their alpine-style condo near the city's foothills.
"If she's happy, I'm happy," says Kirilenko when asked about how he likes his new life.
'100 percent happy'
They have all the symptoms of a devoted young couple. Unsolicited, Masha begins a discussion of Life with Andrei:
"He's an amazing person. He's positive about everything in life. It's a real pleasure to live with him. He doesn't get upset. Well, if he does, it's for five minutes, and then it's over with. He doesn't get depressed. He likes almost everything. He is excited about his personal life and his professional life, too. He's got a great life. I wish it continues like this. He's 100 percent happy. . . . I'm happy. I tell my friends, 'I'm happy. I'm with the most loving man in the world.' "
A few days later, I meet Masha and Andrei again at their condo. He greets me at the door and invites me in. "Coffee? Tea? . . . Sit," he says, sweeping a long arm toward the living room.
Andrei and Masha play chess while the photographer snaps pictures, and Kirilenko keeps up a steady stream of teasing banter with his wife in Russian. Later, they mug for more pictures on their balcony.
Kirilenko is remarkably at ease in front of a camera, demonstrating actor-like skills to perform naturally, whether he's asked to ignore the camera and chat with his wife or to look directly at the camera for a portrait. He has done some modeling, he explains, and he demonstrates his runway form with an exaggerated sashay down the hallway, then laughs at himself.
"The first time I have my picture taken, I am like this," he says, and then he stands at attention, eyes staring. "They say, 'Andrei, smile,' so I smile," and he makes a rigid, forced attempt at a smile. He laughs again at himself.
"He makes me laugh all the time," says Masha. "All the time."
Kirilenko is a light-hearted, humorous man with a square jaw and an unruly, gel-defying crop of short blond hair ("He's too young, he doesn't care about his skin or hair," says Masha). He is remarkably engaging, playful and sweet-tempered. Several Jazz players and coaches used the same word to describe Kirilenko: Refreshing.
"He's a happy-go-lucky guy," says Crotty. "He's refreshing. He really is."
"He's been a breath of fresh air," says Sloan, smiling, "because he's so enthusiastic. He's just a wonderful person."
Says Chiesa, "He's got good talent, but the thing we've discovered is his enthusiasm. It's refreshing."
Settling in
Andrei, who plans to earn a degree in sports science during the NBA off-season, is a homebody. He watches DVDs, listens to music and spends hours on his computer.
"We did go to the U2 concert recently at the Delta Center and he danced, though he can't dance at all," says Masha. "But he likes staying in. I like getting out. When we travel to different NBA cities, I try to see things. By 10 o'clock I'm going to see something. He wants to stay in because he has a game. I'll say, 'Yeah, in seven or eight hours.' But he says he has to concentrate or sleep and not waste energy."
Kirilenko is the first Russian to mount a serious NBA career. His NBA coaches talk about his athleticism, his surprising instincts for the game, his toughness, his ability to rebound against bigger players, his fine shooting range. The lithe, 6-foot-9 Russian is averaging 22 minutes and eight points a game and already has blocked 18 shots. He has star potential.
Kirilenko is Russia's best and most famous basketball player. Russian journalists call him daily in Salt Lake City to inquire about his latest game and his life in the States.
"Every day there is an article about him in Russia," says Masha. "In Portland, we went to a Russian shop and found newspapers and magazines about him. Friends call (from Russia) and say they read about him. When my dad quit basketball, he was not interested in the sport at all. Now he's interested again. He's going to come here and see some games."
Settling into their new lives, the Kirilenkos are effusive in their praise of Utah, although Andrei makes a mild complaint about the traffic laws — too strict, he says. It turns out he was given a speeding ticket this week. How fast was he going? I ask.
"One hundred," he replies.
As I start to leave the condo, Masha makes a request. "Could you put one more thing in the article?" she asks. "I want to thank people who have taken such good care of Andrei — the Jazz and people in the shops and on the streets. It's everywhere. They're a big help for us. They've not only been nice, they've been extremely nice."
Andrei overhears this and says, "Some of the best people live here; better than in Russia. They want to help." Says Masha, "They care. We feel they want to help us. Sincerely."
E-mail: drob@desnews.com