More likely, Sloan couldn't resist having some fun after yet another day passed with a question trying to clear up the mystery of who will start at shooting guard for the Jazz this season.
"Shooting guard?" Sloan said. "We're trying to find a guard that's a making guard. I've heard so much about shooting guards. Anybody can shoot it. We're just trying to get somebody that's going to make 'em at that position."
Following that logic, Giricek is the best candidate the Jazz have. Not only did he make 42.6 percent of his three-pointers last season (on the NBA's second-worst three-point shooting team), Giricek would be the starter by default based on experience alone.
Nothing with Giricek, though, is quite so cut and dried. The 30-year-old is back for his fifth season with the Jazz, but not before a summer in which both Giricek and the team were said to be open to a trade.
"I was hoping I'm going to come back,'' Giricek said. "Really, I didn't want to put too much pressure on myself. My agent was telling me something about trade and stuff, but I wasn't concerned too much. Whatever's going to happen was going to happen.
"Now I'm happy to be part of the team because it had success last year."
How actively the Jazz shopped Giricek is unknown, especially once they needed a veteran after Derek Fisher's departure in late June. Giricek also is entering the final year of his contract, which Kevin O'Connor said tends to bring out the "sense of urgency" in a player.
"We felt that he had a season for us last year that helped us and hopefully he can help us again,'' said O'Connor, the Jazz's executive vice president of basketball operations.
Giricek has 228 games more experience than the Jazz's young shooting guard hopefuls Ronnie Brewer, C.J. Miles and Morris Almond have combined. Sloan has said he will reserve judgment until the Jazz start playing games.
In addition, Giricek reported to training camp showing the benefits of a new diet that has him eating five meals a day to speed up his metabolism. Giricek weighed in at 218 pounds with less than 5 percent body fat, down from 6 percent or 7 percent in the past.
"I was always practicing hard over summer [before],'' Giricek said. "I was never slacking over summer. I practiced every day. The only difference is I wanted to test my body a little bit and see what I can do with it, how my body's going to react."
Whether Giricek truly cares about starting is another story. Greeted by a host of questions at media day about the open competition, Giricek said, "You know, starting, being on the second team, as long as we're winning, it's OK."
He was asked about that seeming indifference Monday. In Giricek's defense, he scored more (averaging 7.9 points compared to 7.0 points) and shot better in the 55 games he came off the bench last season than the six games he started.
"As long as you play, as long as you're involved, no matter if you are in the first five or the second group, it's not important to me,'' Giricek said, adding, "I'm going to make myself better and I'm going to try to earn more minutes."
Sloan was asked if Giricek might be better suited to coming off the bench than starting. Until last season, Giricek had been a career double-figure scorer who averaged better than 20 minutes a game.
"He played well last year. I thought he had some good moments off the bench,'' Sloan said. "We'll just have to see. All I can do is put him out there and see what we got."
Giricek long has had an uneasy relationship with Sloan, with his commitment to defense being questioned, and didn't get off the bench in six games last season. After a summer spent clearing his mind in Croatia and playing with his 3 1/2 -year-old daughter, Giricek said he thought things would be different.
"During the course of the season, there's always misunderstandings,'' Giricek said. "Maybe somebody blow up out of proportions. But I don't see no reason why we wouldn't be on the same page."
rsiler@sltrib.com
MPG FG% 3PT% FT% PPG
2006-07 19.5 .462 .426 .816 7.8
Career 24.4 .442 .368 .820 10.2
