Jazz's Boozer just wants to put 'tough season' behind him

Some good news for the Utah Jazz: Carlos Boozer's foot feels terrific.

Of course, seeing as how the season is over and the highest-paid Jazz player made that announcement at Thursday's annual Delta Center team meeting and locker clean-out, it was hardly an earth-shaker.

"I'm out of my boot now," said Boozer, who has been seen hobbling around the bowels of the Delta Center the past two months, wearing street clothes and a rehab boot.

"My foot is feeling great. Hopefully the next two weeks I'll be back on the court playing. I'm going to L.A. to do some of my rehab. I'll start walking on the treadmill, and doing that type of stuff in the pool, and then hopefully jogging, and starting to run, and starting to play pickup, do some drills and see how it feels."

All of which leads one to believe Boozer expects to be fully healthy for next season. A season he and his teammates hope will be more successful than the one just concluded.

"It was a tough season," he conceded. "Everybody's frustrated. We had a lot of ups and downs."

What made it most frustrating, Boozer said, is that they showed such promise back in November.

"It's tough to look all the way back to the beginning of the season," he said. "But we were pretty good. I mean, we were 8-2 at one point, and there was a big buzz about us. And, all of a sudden, obviously with the injuries and stuff, and the way the season went, the buzz changed. But we're pretty good when we're healthy . . . When we were healthy we showed we could play with anybody."

Actually, 6-2 was the Jazz's high-water mark at the start of the season. But stats aside, a bigger question of late has not been who Boozer can play against, but whom he wants to play with. Jazz owner Larry H. Miller publicly questioned Boozer's commitment at midseason, and it wasn't long after that that the $68-million power forward went down for the count.

Miller and Boozer say thay have since patched up their differences, and Miller said this week that he expects Boozer to spend the remaining five years of his contract in a Jazz uniform.

Asked whether he still felt valued by Miller and the franchise, Boozer said, "I have to play. It's tough when you're not out there playing. We haven't really spoken about it since that time, so I'm not sure. But other than not speaking about it, I feel fine."