Boozer's glad to be back with Jazz

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — It hurt Carlos Boozer to be away so long.

But nothing, the Jazz power forward suggested after catching up with the club Friday, could trump the pain of watching his young son Carmani endure a bout with sickle cell anemia.

"I mean, I couldn't even think about basketball at the time of going through what my son was going through," Boozer said before the Jazz's 100-85 preseason win over the Detroit Pistons on Friday night here. "I thank God to have the support of my organization, and, I'll tell you, it's good to be back and get this thing going."

While the defending Northwest Division-champion Jazz opened training camp last week in Boise and began preseason play earlier this week, Boozer was at home in Miami helping care for his ailing 1-year-old.

The boy has undergone both chemotherapy and, in August, a bone marrow transplant to battle the incurable but treatable disease, an inherited and potentially fatal blood disorder.

The ongoing saga kept Boozer, a 2004 Olympian and a current member of Team USA's senior national program, from playing for the United States in their FIBA Tournament of the Americas Olympic qualifier this past summer.

He decided to rejoin the Jazz now only because Carmani was just recently discharged, with a favorable prognosis, from a Miami-area hospital.

"He went through a lot, but he's back home now," Boozer said. "He's doing OK. He's getting better day by day. But the good thing is he's home, and that's why I'm here. If he was at the hospital, I wouldn't be here.

"He's not out of the woods yet, but he's doing well," added Boozer, the Jazz's leading scorer and rebounder last season. "Each day, hopefully, is a better day."

The Jazz know Boozer will be a bit behind — "From a mental point of view," general manager Kevin O'Connor said Friday, "he's got to get back into it" — but were more than willing to give their 2007 NBA All-Star all the time he needed in Miami.

"It's so hard not to be with your team, especially as much as I love my teammates and I love what we do here in Utah," said Boozer, who helped lead the Jazz into last season's Western Conference finals. "You know, we're on the brink of doing something special if we can replicate what we did last year, but be better at it.

"It was tough not being at the camp," he added, "but at the same time I had my teammates and my owner (Larry H. Miller) and my GM (O'Connor) and my team, my entire Utah Jazz staff, supportive of where I had to be."