Anyone see that profile in last week's Sports Illustrated of Utah Jazz star Carlos Boozer? Perhaps the author unfairly played it up, but the way Boozer's relationship with his wife was portrayed made Boozer sound like Doug Christie, Jr.:
[Boozer's wife CeCe] watches film with him, rebounds his practice shots and analyzes his play after games. Last summer she also sat in on every meeting during his controversial free-agent contract negotiations. When Boozer first spoke with Jazz owner Larry Miller, CeCe was on the conference call (as was Carlos's agent at the time, Rob Pelinka) and did, recalls Miller, "about a third of the talking."Yikes. I'd been wondering why Boozer would walk away from an understood deal to re-sign with Cleveland; this makes it sound like the whole thing was all CeCe's doing, with Pelinka, the ex-agent, just the patsy.
Apparently the new management in Utah, while being happy with Boozer's play, sees the underlying problem.
The Jazz brass takes pains to distance itself from the controversy. "What happened in Cleveland was like a divorce," says G.M. Kevin O'Connor. "We're like the remarriage."Is O'Connor trying to drop a subtle hint that the Jazz would like Boozer to divorce his wife?
And finally, there's the article's closing quote, which was Sports Guy's quote of the day. Here's Boozer explaining why he was late coming home, and thus had to cancel an interview with reporter Chris Ballard:
"There are two ways to argue with a woman, and neither of them work."Huh? Is that supposed to be some variation on the old "what do you say to a woman with two black eyes" joke? Methinks Ballard was upset about the canceled interview, so he therefore didn't have much trouble painting his subject as the second-most whipped player in the league. Good thing he didn't try the same thing with Ron Artest. Posted by Stephen Silver at November 23, 2004 12:48 AM
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