Boozer keeping quiet on his summer plans

MIAMI — If the fact he's missed so many games to injury this season has altered his previously disclosed decision to opt out of the final year of his contract with the Jazz in the coming summer, he isn't saying.

If the fact the economy is in the tank has done the same, he isn't saying that either.

Two-time NBA All-Star and two-time United States Olympian Carlos Boozer, in fact, isn't saying much at all about his offseason plans — not even as he sits here in Miami, which once seemed like, but no longer appears to be, his No. 1 suspected destination for potential defection.

"I'm not worried about the summer," Boozer, who calls Miami home but now is rumored to be a possible prime offseason target for the Detroit Pistons, said before the Jazz practiced here Friday for today's game against the Miami Heat.

"I'm still trying to win a championship this season with the team, and, for me, just to be as best as I can for my teammates, so we can be as close as we can to winning a championship," added Boozer, who riled Jazz brass when in December he publicly and definitively declared his intentions to opt out of the final $12.7 million season in his current deal and seek more money either in Utah or elsewhere. "I think we have to see how good we are."

The Jazz, 41-25 overall and 2-2 so far on a five-game road trip that ends Sunday at Orlando, are positioned to make a third straight playoff run with Deron Williams at the point and Boozer playing power forward.

"I think," Boozer said with a little bit of a laugh, "when we're at full strength — or when I'm at full strength, when I catch up to them — we can be pretty good."

The Jazz's problem for now is that Boozer — who missed 44 games earlier this season with a quadriceps injury and related knee injury that led to arthroscopic surgery, and another game last Sunday at Toronto with a sprained ankle — remains something decidedly less than 100 percent.

"I'd like for him to be in great shape, but I think you can see he's not in as good of condition as he was, and that hurts him," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said before a loss at Atlanta on Wednesday night that ended Utah's 12-game win streak. "But I don't have a problem with that."

To the contrary, Sloan continues to talk up his top rebounder at every opportunity.

The Jazz coach called Boozer's attitude in light of what awaits this summer "terrific," and suggested it's only others outside the franchise who are trying to bring him down.

"It's unfortunate," Sloan said, "but people look ... to see a guy fail.

"We want 'em to succeed," he added, "and try to approach it that way."

Still, the conditioning question remains something of a concern.