Another Boozer Breakdown

GUYS IN TIES

I’m seeing where Jazz coaches and players are expressing regret that former teammate Carlo Boozer is out for eight weeks.

Reports said he broke his hand after a fall in his Chicago home, Saturday.

The former teammates say it was an accident and couldn’t be helped; that Boozer has had a run of bad luck.

I agree with all that. But where Boozer went wrong were the times he actually could have played. Like, maybe, last year’s regular season-ending game against Phoenix, when he had a stomach strain. It was crucial to the Jazz’s playoff positioning, but Boozer didn’t answer the bell. He missed months, during his time in Utah, with a hamstring injury.

A broken hand is a broken hand. A hamstring or stomach strain is a case-by-case deal. But Boozer never seemed to put himself out when he was injured. An accumulation of injuries and missed games have landed him a reputation as a half-invested guy.

In this case, I don’t know what Boozer could of done. If his hand is broken, it’s broken. That would have been forgiven, if not for all the other injuries that caused him to miss games.

As for Boozer’s history of injuries, all I can do is quote Karl Malone from last summer, when we were discussing injuries in the NBA: “A strain?” said Malone, “What’s a strain?”