After 1 game, a dozen practices, and the entire pre-season: AK still fine with his role (so can we stop asking him this question daily? Huh? Can guys with journalism degrees find something else newsworthy?)

The Salt Lake Tribune reports (I haven't even read the article and I doubt that I will from it title of it) that "AK says he's fine with his new role". Which is good, because just the day before they put out an article that's titled "Kirilenko, Miles content with new roles". I'm glad that nothing changed over night. I can understand how the perception of AK is that he makes a stink about things for no reason, and unexpectedly . . . but that perception is wrong. I fully believe that he only makes stinks about things that are justified. And pretty soon being asked in every interview everyday since the beginning of the month about "how does he feel TODAY about coming off the bench" is going to get very old soon and be a justified thing to blow up about. (Some recent examples of him being quoted in JUST one newspaper are Oct 31, Oct 30th A, Oct 30th B, Oct 21st, Oct 13th, Oct 8th, etc...) After all, he's going to be asked this question in 41 other cities this season, you'd think that the hometown reporters would give him a break?

Now, let's not just jump to conclusions but I think that this "AK off the Bench" issue could be the new "Fesenko's Hairgate". We need to ask ourselves a question, though: is this really that newsworthy that the Salt Lake Tribune is spending so much time on it that it appears to be on the same level as the near daily updates on the 2nd year player's hairstyles? (Which I satirized here, here, and here)

The second question, and perhaps more serious one, is "is this really the best they can do? These people have journalism degrees and all they do is report the same story over and over again?" It's really a shame when this appears to happen -- what if a blog wrote the same story over and over again, and used the same pictures each time and so forth? That blog would lose credibility and become less interesting because it appears to be fixated on an already sufficiently discussed situation. I don't think that newspapers with PAID reporters who do this for their living should get a pass on something like this.

And what about Andrei? I'm not expecting him to go all Chris Everett here, but how do you think he feels? If you know how to read between the lines you would already know that -- but apparently beat writers on the case of "Andrei off the bench" don't seem to pick up on these things.