Decision is simple: get better or get worse

Not really. It's just that this Boozer business has jammed things up while they wait. They couldn't trade him, the way other teams traded players on draft day, because of the rules governing opt-out clauses.

Nevertheless, standing pat the rest of the summer doesn't seem an option.

"This team is going this way, this team's going the other way," said G.M. Kevin O'Connor, speaking of the league in general. "There's nobody in the middle."

In other words, you get better or you get worse.

Now we find Millsap — whom the Jazz have vowed to re-sign — wants approximately a 1,000 percent raise.

He must think he works for an oil company.

So it's going to be expensive keeping a guy everyone assumed would be staying.

Theoretically, the Jazz's three opt-out players could opt in. The team could still carry them until the February deadline, then do a salary dump to avoid luxury taxes, which are calculated at the end of the season.

That would just be deferring the suspense.

I'm hoping they get it over with now.

At the end of last season, I thought keeping the current group together would work OK. But that was before the Jazz's neighbors started putting in granite counter-tops and recessed lights and hot tubs. In other words, they upgraded.

Suddenly, the Jazz looked a little dated.

They need Boozer to be gone, then work on some Monty Hall-like deal-making. Sign Millsap, give Williams some love and go out and get better by signing free agents and trading here and there. The current group isn't going to be enough.

Don't call it cold and calculating. Call it keeping up with the Joneses.

Or in this case, catching up with the contenders.

e-mail: rock@desnews.com