Boozer's boarding-house reach

You can talk all you want about Deron Williams' brilliant 31-point performance Monday night and Mehmet Okur's timely 3-pointers and Andrei Kirlilenko's seven blocked shots and Dee Brown's important minutes off the bench.

But without Carlos Boozer's 20 rebounds, including a huge offensive board with 17 seconds left, which he followed with what turned out to be the winning basket, the Utah Jazz might be staring at a 0-1 deficit in the best-of-seven series with Golden State.

Boozer finished Monday's game with five turnovers and a below-average 6-of-15 field-goal shooting, but his work on the boards was key for the Jazz, who outboarded the Warriors 54-36.

Half of Boozer's 20 rebounds came on the offensive end, which was also half of the team's 20 offensive boards.

"They don't really have a guy who can box me out, so I'm going to go to the boards no matter what," Boozer said after Tuesday's practice. "I want to go and crash the boards, that's my mentality, regardless of what they do."

After Okur missed a 3-pointer from the left corner, Boozer leaped high to corral the ball before the Warriors could react and went back to the hoop with a left-handed putback that gave the Jazz a 114-112 lead.

"I saw it coming off a little bit and moved over to where I thought it was going to be," Boozer said. "I went and got the ball and took it up strong and got a nice little left-handed shot."

That Boozer grabbed 20 rebounds, including the biggest one of the game, shouldn't be any surprise, considering that the former Duke star averaged 11.7 rebounds during the regular season and 11.0 boards in the Houston series.

"You have to have the desire to do it, that's the first thing," said Boozer, when asked what makes him a great rebounder. "Sometimes it's positioning, sometimes it's watching the flight of the ball. It's a number of things."

It isn't necessarily size.

Although Boozer is listed at 6-foot-9, he looks like he could be closer to 6-7. "I'm a short guy in this league," he said.

But his wide body, 266 pounds worth, helps, along with other factors.

"He's got a big body and clears out a lot of space for himself to be able to (rebound)," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. "He's around the basket, and he's a very good jumper for as big as he is. He also has great hands — that's the other thing."

After outrebounding the Warriors by four in the first half, the Jazz turned it up to outboard the Warriors by 14 in the second half, by eight in the deciding fourth quarter.

Boozer said there was no talk about rebounding at halftime, just about winning.

"It wasn't something we consciously thought about. We just went out there and attacked the glass on both ends," he said. "If we can win the battle of the boards each game and be effective on the offensive end by controlling the tempo, we'll give ourselves a chance to win."

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