Why Paul Millsap Should Make the Utah Jazz Forget About Carlos Boozer

The Utah Jazz have a problem.

Oh, it's a good problem, to be sure. The Jazz are 15-11, playing great basketball under a coach who has been with them since before a lot of this year's rookies were born, and are fighting for their third consecutive Northwest Division crown.

Not only that, but Jerry Sloan's group is remaining among the league's elite despite being banged up more than any other team in the league. The Jazz started the season without point guard Deron Williams, who was fresh off of winning a gold medal with Team USA in the summer. They went a stretch of games without Williams and former All-Stars Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur. By the time those guys returned to the lineup, Sloan's crew was missing two-time All-Star Carlos Boozer from the starting lineup.

That Boozer injury, however, may have been a blessing in disguise for a Jazz team based in the NBA's smallest market.

Boozer suffered a strained left quadriceps tendon during a Nov. 19 win at home against Milwaukee. That win put Utah at 8-4 despite the fact that they blew games against inept Eastern Conference competition such as New York, Washington, and Charlotte. Boozer, on the other hand, did a good job padding his stats by putting up 20.5 points and 11.7 rebounds in 33.8 minutes per game.

Since the Boozer injury, the Jazz have been .500 at 7-7, but the last thing you can blame for that is the lack of an inside presence to bring the double-double every night.

Paul Millsap, who like Boozer is a former second-round pick, has picked up the slack by averaging 17.1 points and 10.6 boards in the 14 games since the Jazz lost Boozer. Millsap's latest masterpiece was dropping 32 points and 10 rebounds on 13-for-20 shooting on defending Defensive Player of the Year Kevin Garnett in a 100-91 loss at Boston.

While Boozer shot 55.9 percent from the floor before going down and is shooting 54.2 percent from the field for his career, Millsap has lit it up to the tune of 57.4 percent (93-162) from the floor since the injury to the former Duke Blue Devil. Monday night's game in Boston was Millsap's 12th consecutive double-double, an astounding feat considering that he didn't have one before that stretch.

So here is the "good" problem for the Jazz and Director of Basketball Operations Kevin O'Connor this season: Both Millsap and Boozer are free agents this summer.

Boozer, who just turned 27 and is in the prime of his career, has a $12.6 million player option for next season that he can turn down to become the most coveted unrestricted free agent for the summer of '09.

But when it comes to free agency, Boozer doesn't necessarily have the most desirable history, and his status as a man of his word—which should be considered every time the “desire to stay in Utah” comes out of his mouth—may have been destroyed beyond repair considering what happened the last time Boozer was on the open market.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had a team option on Boozer for the 2004-05 season at a little over $700,000, a minor salary by NBA standards, and the product of Boozer's status as a second-round pick. Boozer, coming off a breakthrough season by putting up 15.5 points and 11.4 rebounds for the Cavs, asked to be let out of his contract so that he could sign a long-term contract with Cleveland.

The cap-strapped Cavaliers did not have Boozer's "Bird Rights" since Boozer had not played for them for three years, and they could not go over the cap to re-sign him. If another team with the cap space chose to make Boozer an offer he couldn't refuse, then the rest would be history.

Depending on whom you ask, Boozer promised then-owner Gordon Gund of the Cavs that he will re-sign and show his loyalty to Cleveland to pay Gund back. There were so many things that went wrong with both parties in the most underrated debacle in recent league history, but the bottom line is that Boozer was accused by multiple sources to have gone back on his word and tricked the Cavs on his way to a big payday.

However, Millsap's slate is clean. He's been in the league for three years, and the third-year forward out of Louisiana Tech has a game similar to Boozer's. While Boozer is listed at 6'9" and 266, Millsap goes at 6'8" and 255. The latter is also just 23 and has the athleticism to boot. You won't see Boozer flying high to finish alley-oops, but while Millsap has the hops to finish high above the rim, he's also the hard-hat, lunch-pail, and punch-the-clock-and-go-to-work kind of player that the elder Boozer is.

O'Connor and the Jazz aren't going to be able to keep both, especially since they already have an exorbitant amount of money tied up in Williams and Kirilenko. Okur can also opt out of the $9 million he's due next year and become a free agent with Boozer this summer. Both Okur and Boozer can probably get far more on the open market than their current deals with Utah will pay them in 2009-10.

And then there is Millsap.

Boozer and Jazz owner Larry Miller had a rough start to their relationship in Utah following Boozer's tumultuous departure from Cleveland. He's had an up-and-down tenure in Salt Lake City, and the Jazz have a younger and more athletic version of him waiting in the wings with Millsap.

If O'Connor can move Boozer, who has been injury-prone during his four-plus seasons with the Jazz, before the trading deadline for some other pieces to put around guys like Williams, Millsap, and Kirilenko, then Utah could be setting itself up to be an absolute force not just for this season, but for many, many seasons to come after 2008-09.

Don't make the mistake of believing that Miller can shell out the money for all three. Millsap knows by now that he cannot only be a starter in this league, but a star.

If he's moved back to the bench behind Boozer once the Olympian returns, then Millsap's days of being Boozer's backup are numbered after this season. And there aren't enough positions—not to mention minutes—to distribute between Millsap, Boozer, and Okur.

Having up to three big free agents like Utah has is going to cause a big problem this summer for many teams. A bad problem. A problem that teams want to stay away from.

But Sloan and O'Connor definitely come out as being fortunate in their situation. They have a plethora of options to keep the team amongst the league's best, and possibly make them even better than they have been.

It's how they go about doing that, of course, that will determine just how fortunate the Jazz are.