One of the most interesting aspects to the news of the past week regarding the Jazz, namely that their big free agents opted in and that their team could remain essentially the same as it was before, only at a much higher cost, is the split it created among Jazz fans.

Some really buy into what management is selling: Give this team another chance. It will grow and deliver.

Others are not buying in, calling instead for Kevin O'Connor to earn his paycheck and do what other Western Conference clubs are doing: Improve the team's chance of winning a title.

It's easy to divide and define the discussion into and by an optimists-versus-pessimists squabble. A few years ago, a study came out revealing that optimists live longer than pessimists and realists. Why? Beats me.

Maybe it's because there is comfort to be taken in the warm, cozy notion that everything's going to be all right, even if it's not; that things will look up, even if nothing's changed.

It reminds me of the old Beatles song: "Getting Better." McCartney wrote the hopeful words: ... It's getting better, a little better all the time . And Lennon injected the kicker: It can't get no worse.

Things could be worse for the Jazz. They remain a talented bunch, a solidly good team for a perennially good franchise. But they are not great, and standing pat will not make them great. Staying the same will not help them beat the Lakers and Nuggets and Spurs and others in the West and in the East.

They need defensive help, and O'Connor knows this, although he never dwells on it publicly. I asked him about that deficiency during a recent interview and he suggested, in so many words, that finding proficient interior defenders is difficult. When pressed further, he asked for suggestions of players he should acquire. I thought that was a curious response, more defensive than anything the Jazz put on the floor the past two seasons.

Nobody wants to die young. Everybody wants rain to fall in the form of lollipops and candy drops.

But the truth is crying out here. The Jazz need a change.

Maybe not a huge one, maybe not a blockbuster, but a significant one.

And the Jazz are doing themselves and their fans a disservice by sitting back and altering nothing. They are paralyzed, it seems, by hope for a better tomorrow that will simply spring out of today, and a payroll that has jumped a rocket and blasted into the ionosphere.

Perhaps they will yet make an important move. Or maybe they won't.

Maybe they'll wait until next offseason, when many of their biggest and most expensive names will be free agents, hoping that the team will find relief and opportunity when a bunch of that money walks. And from that vantage point, Andrei Kirilenko will have just one year left on his burdensome deal. Maybe they'll sit back and root against the Knicks, hoping that lifted first-round New York pick will land them a budding star.

In the meantime, they'll finish high enough in the Western Conference standings to qualify for the playoffs, to be good, same as it ever was, but stir no legitimate run for a title.

Some Jazz fans take their comfort in that. Always good, never great. A winner, but not a champion.

Others, though, are darn near driven mad by the constant drip of being competent, forever competent, but rarely a contender.

All the money the Jazz will pay out this season, even if some of it was put upon them by players opting in, shows a willingness by ownership to reach higher. Now, the Jazz need the acumen and the expertise, the vision and the nerve among team leadership -- O'Connor and Jerry Sloan -- to redirect resources to build what deserving fans here, optimists and pessimists alike, have never had.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Monson and Graham Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com .