After a week of training camp, so many questions remain about his attitude, his confidence and his desire to keep playing for the Jazz. Yet during the team's stay in Boise, Idaho, there was a sign that AK was back.

Kirilenko clucked.

Yes, like a chicken.

After a few days of mostly deflecting questions about his unhappiness, his trade request and his future with the Jazz, one subject finally evoked the AK of old. With rookie center Kyrylo Fesenko in camp, Kirilenko reflected on his own indoctrination into American culture six years ago, citing the foreign food as one of the biggest shocks.

He remembered latching onto chicken Caesar salad as his go-to dish, to such a degree that he practically "clucked."

Recounting the experience, he actually clucked. The clucking was the signature moment of Kirilenko's week in Boise, a suggestion that the Jazz's most animated storyteller and formerly most dynamic player was becoming himself again.

Now, how the clucking translates to performance on the court is another issue. Yet there can be no doubt that intentionally or not, the Jazz have done everything they could to make him comfortable in his old surroundings, while making clear they have one overriding expectation for him: Just play.

"I think he's feeling better," said longtime teammate Matt Harpring. "Just to me, his demeanor's better. I mean, I want to say he's having fun."

And why not? He came to camp and was issued a personal shooting coach and a rookie teammate who once idolized him and eagerly lends him Russian books. Anything else, AK?

The camp reunited him with Jeff Hornacek, who retired just before Kirilenko started playing for the Jazz in 2001 but remained in town that season and helped him with his shooting. They have worked together occasionally since then, and Hornacek recently approached the Jazz about becoming more formally involved with the team with ideas of coaching someday.

Just so happens, they had a little project for him. The Jazz say they made the arrangement with Hornacek unrelated to Kirilenko's cries of displeasure with the team, but his arrival in Boise was a nice coincidence.

There's no official title for Hornacek and nobody can quite spell out his job description for the season, when he intends to fly from Phoenix to Salt Lake City or wherever the team is playing a couple of times a week to work with Kirilenko and others. For now, he's a combination of psychologist, coach and rebounder.

"Being around him, trying to keep him upbeat," Hornacek said of his recent mission. "We come out here and shoot, and he's lighting it up. I'm telling him, 'Andrei, you're a great shooter.' "

It seems to be working, by coach Jerry Sloan's account of Kirilenko's shooting in the team's practices.

If Kirilenko needs more affirmation, there's always Fesenko. Growing up in Ukraine, he remembers watching Kirilenko play in Europe before joining the Jazz.

"I was thinking, I will never be like him, I will never speak with him, I would never think that I could play with him on one team," Fesenko said with a look of wonder. "Everything's changed."

Certainly, it's a new world for Fess, whose immediate future includes driving lessons that eventually will enable him to negotiate I-15 traffic when he spends much of this season with the Jazz-affiliated NBDL team in Orem. Kirilenko will be with the big-league team, trying to reinvent his game - or is it more a case of finding his old self again?

Regardless of the outcome, it will not happen all at once. As the Jazz will start playing exhibition games Wednesday against Milwaukee at EnergySolutions Arena, the preseason preparation will be not be completely AK-centric.

For one thing, Sloan remains conscious of not overworking Kirilenko and others who played for their national teams in the summer. If there's reclamation work of AK's game and his confidence to be done, Sloan said, "I'm not going to try to gain all that back in a short period of time."

Instead, this will be a gradual process, a steady quest to make Kirilenko the player he once was, in the context of a team that has improved its other personnel at his apparent expense. It is a search for a return of the multidimensional skills that can help the Jazz keep progressing, with Kirilenko finding value in his contributions that go beyond shooting better and scoring more.

It's all about an attitude, the enthusiasm that was AK's former trademark. It just may be coming back, one cluck at a time.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com