This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Posted: 11:04 PM- A day before facing the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, Utah's Carlos Boozer lounged in his team's practice facility joking with members of the media, telling stories about his days at Duke and chatting about frivolous topics.
His relaxed demeanor gave no indication he and his teammates were facing a must-win situation Saturday against the Spurs. A day later, his shots flowed as easily and were as varied as the small talk. He chatted up the Spurs inside, flirted with their defense with midrange jumpers and slammed home his point with some dunks in Utah's 109-83 win over the Spurs in the EnergySolutions Arena.
Boozer finished with 27 points on 12-for-19 shooting and had a game-high 12 rebounds.
"That is our guy, we always try to get him going every game," teammate Andrei Kirilenko said. "Sometimes it is difficult to get him touches, but if you can do that, you know you will be fine."
The Jazz were indeed fine behind Boozer's play.
The power forward did most of his damage in the third quarter when he had 10 points and five rebounds. He scored Utah's first basket of the game on a 17-footer then got a rebound and tipped in a shot, setting the tone for Utah's big quarter.
In the fourth he all but put the game away for the Jazz when he scored on a 7-footer, set a screen that allowed Deron Williams to score on a driving layup then stole the ball from Tim Duncan and finished off the play with a layup that gave the Jazz a 92-74 lead with 5:46 remaining.
The Spurs called timeout, but they couldn't magically come up with a way to get their star Tim Duncan out of foul trouble and they couldn't slow Boozer either.
"We kept trying to get him touches," rookie Paul Millsap said. "He needs to get those touches for our offense to work and we wanted to do a better job of getting points in the paint tonight."
Utah outscored the Spurs 50-26 inside the paint. That stat was a big improvement for the Jazz from the first two meetings as the Spurs won the inside battle 56-42 in the first game and the two teams both scored 46 points inside in Game 2.
Boozer finished with 20-plus points in those games too, but his points came easier on Saturday than in those contests with Williams driving inside and Utah's bench doing a better job of scoring.
"Me and D-Will, we said if we attack and be aggressive, good things would happen for the team and that's what happened," Boozer said.
"We did a much better job of moving and spacing to help him get open," guard Derek Fisher said. "We had a slow start, but once Deron came on and Gordan [Giricek] made some shots down the stretch, it really helped him out."