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He was born in the Siberian city of Izhevsk, which was briefly renamed for former Soviet Union defense minister Dimitri Ustinov, but grew up in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He was playing in the Russian national basketball league at age 15, and his wife Marina, a singer, is the daughter of Andrei Lapatov, who spent fourteen years on the Russian national basketball team.
He was drafted by the Jazz in 1999. He has since emerged as one of the top young players in the NBA, and one of the league's top one-on-one defenders.
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Another Andrei Kirilenko was a high official of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.