When Andrei Kirilenko was 8 years old, he asked his parents to buy him a horse.

Nobody knew where he got the idea, his mother, Olga, said last week in her neat apartment in a high-rise on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Maybe it was a movie he saw, or some cowboys-and-Indians book he read - but he was very serious, and make no mistake, he just wanted it badly.

“He just cried and cried when we said no. But where would we keep a horse - on the balcony of our small apartment?” his mother said.

From the standpoint of Olga, as well as of his friends back in St. Petersburg, having a horse might have been the only dream Andrei ever has had that hasn't been realized. From the day his first coach, Alexei Vasiliev, came to Kirilenko's elementary school in the Moscow District of St. Petersburg in 1988 and picked him for a basketball class, to his current status as an NBA star, Kirilenko has appeared to always get what he wanted.

“There were three boys who came to see me when I visited his school that day to look for promising athletes,” Vasiliev said. “Andrei was the only one who immediately said, 'I want to do it.' No delay, no hesitation, no 'Let me go ask my mom.' ”

What also persuaded Vasiliev to try out the tall, lanky boy who moved to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) with his family a few years earlier from Izhevsk, an industrial city about 600 miles east of Moscow, was a key on a latch around his neck. “He seemed very independent and goal-oriented for his age.”

Vasiliev's decision proved right. Andrei worked very hard from day one, he rode his bike across the city to get to the gym and didn't miss practices. He wasn't the fastest or the strongest, Vasiliev said, but he always went to the end. That wasn't easy for him, with six or seven practices a week - while keeping up his school grades.

Vasiliev was Kirilenko's coach for nine years, until Andrei turned 16.

"It's everything. You can't pick one thing out, just overall," Kirilenko said, referring to what Vasiliev taught him. "We had a lot of games, like different kind of games for dribbling, catching, like moving without the ball. We would play a kind of rugby, but you can't touch and can't dribble. It helped teach game away from ball."

One could say Andrei's athletic prowess was in his genes. Both parents, Olga and Gennady, were good athletes in their own right who had switched from playing sports to coaching - mother in basketball, father in soccer.

"I like basketball early because my mom played," Kirilenko said. "I played soccer and basketball because my dad played soccer, but when [Vasiliev] came to school I knew I wanted to play."

But Olga said that 20 years ago she was much more concerned about her son being healthy than about any sort of stardom designs for him. When Andrei was 6, he injured his leg badly playing soccer with his street buddies and the injury turned into something scary - a bone inflammation, osteomyelit. The disease was stubborn and wouldn't go away, but apparently regular exercise was seen as a chance to heal. It worked.

“After he began working with Vasiliev, we soon forgot Andrei ever had that problem,” Olga said.

What came later is more or less public knowledge.

Career takes flight

In September 1991, soon after the failed Communist coup attempt in Moscow, Andrei transferred to a specialized school for young athletes in St. Petersburg's Frunzensky District. The country around him, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was crumbling fast and finally fell apart on Christmas Day of that year, but Andrei kept playing.

He joined St. Petersburg's city team and in 1996 won the All-Russia junior title. That year, he also transferred to the prestigious Olympic Reserve School. The next year, at 15, Andrei became the youngest player in Russia's Basketball Super League as he joined Spartak, one of the leading sport clubs of the nation. Soon after, he said goodbye to his family and to Vasiliev as he was invited to join the top Russian club, CSKA, in Moscow.

“Of course I was worried,” said Olga Kirilenko. Independent as he was, Andrei was very close to his mother. He loved to talk. “Sometimes, on Sundays, it would feel nice to sleep in after a rough week at work. And the night before, Andrei would promise not to bug me in the morning. But then, he would come up to me at 7 a.m. to say he already made breakfast so it's time to wake up. And then it was, 'Let's talk, mom.' ”

And, for all his independence, it was still, “Mom, could you wash my clothes? Mom, I'm hungry.”

All that was history now. The only consolation was that Olga Kirilenko's sister lived in Moscow and could help.

'They will just kill him'

Olga didn't realize then that it was just the beginning, and in a few short years, Andrei would make the next big step called the NBA.

“When he was first drafted, he was 18, and he was too thin - I saw those big, burly men who played for NBA and thought, 'That's it, they will just kill him,' ” she said. “Fortunately, the process took about two years, and he used the time to work on his strength, so by the time he was 20, he was a much better fit for his future team, the Utah Jazz.”

He still had a rough time fitting in, though. There was a disconnect between the playing style he was taught - and followed when he played with the Russian national team - and the style of Jerry Sloan, said Kirilenko's former teammate, lifelong friend and head of his charity foundation in St. Petersburg, Yevgeny Ivanov.

“It's interesting sometimes to watch an NBA game and listen to what the commentators say afterward,” Ivanov said. “It's always, 'Kirilenko this, Kirilenko that,' or 'Williams this, Williams that' - and rarely anything about a team effort, team as a unit. Very star-oriented.

“I think that was the core of the disagreements [Kirilenko] had last year with Sloan.”

Coach Vasiliev wishes he could watch Kirilenko more often, but very few Jazz games are televised in Russia.

“I always have followed the Jazz, even before Andrei started playing for them, when it was largely [Karl] Malone and [John] Stockton show,” Vasiliev said. “Sloan is one of the best basketball coaches in the world.”

A long plane ride

Overall, Olga is very happy for her son, and proud. She loves Utah, too - she has visited a few times and quickly made friends in the neighborhood despite her rudimentary English - but wouldn't mind seeing Andrei return home after his playing days are over.

“Andrei has made it,” she said. “He has a great career, a loving wife and adorable kids, good friends.

“He seems happy in Utah, and he's happy in Russia, they visit every year. . . . But if you ask me, I'd rather have him here. Utah is just too far away from here. I've flown to America. Ten hours in the air is too much for me.”

michaelvn@sltrib.com