Carlos Boozer is the biggest BUM in the NBA. He just agreed to sign a contract with the Bulls, and while I’m happy he’s ‘getting paid,’ I can’t help but wonder what he’s been chasing ever since he came into the league.
He was drafted by Cleveland where he played for a few years, then infamously backed out of a vocal agreement with the team to sign with Utah; the Cleveland team he left already had a young Lebron James as its budding superstar. I understand not wanting to leave money on the table, but is that all he’s chasing?
Now he’s leaving Utah with one of the top 2 young point guards in the league, a great franchise, and a great coach to go to Chicago. He has a great situation in Utah, and if he can get healthy, they have a chance to build and create opportunities to win a championship. He will definitely have those opportunities to build in Chicago, but at 29, with a very young core in Chicago, how long before he runs out of opportunities to build and his window closes. He’s already injury plagued, I just wonder what it is he’s chasing after.
Ok, I admit, Boozer is not a bum. That was more of my emotions coming out, and I think he’s’ a very good player. He has the potential to help get a team over that edge of becoming elite, but he keeps running from teams every time they’re in that process of building. He’s not a Kevin Garnett, ‘I’m gonna save a franchise and lead them to a ring,’ talent. He’s the type of player you get to pair up with another star (Lebron in Cleveland, D-Will in Utah, Rose in Chicago) and build around them. But the key word is build.
Maybe Boozer senses his time is running out and that they haven’t done enough in putting players around him and D-Will, or maybe he fills that as a great a coach Jerry Sloan is, if he can’t win a ‘chip with Stockton and Malone, he’s not gonna win one (although Jordan stopped a lot of people from winning them). Whatever it is, I hope he finds it before he’s in that Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Mike Finely phase of taking a check just to get a ring.
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