With his 17-month old son, Carmani, still recovering from a bone-marrow transplant, Boozer has spent the early weeks of the Jazz season trying to balance life as a basketball star and a father with his fingers crossed.

The only thing Boozer can do is check in at home, over and over again, 10 to 15 times a day. He's on the phone before and after practices as well as before and after games. It's the first thing he does in the morning and last thing he does every night.

Even if it's only for a day, just being home again will provide a measure of relief for the All-Star forward, who missed the first 11 days of training camp and the preseason while his son was still hospitalized.

"I'm going to have a blast," Boozer said. "I can't wait to just hold him, go to the park with him, take him for a little ride. I've got a Ferrari, he loves how it sounds. He goes, 'Vroom, vroom.' I can't wait to get home and hang out with him."

In that context, Boozer's return to Cleveland for tonight's game against the Cavaliers could not seem more inconsequential. Yes, Boozer expects his ears to burn from all the booing, but it's hard for it to register when his mind is weighed down by other matters.

"That's real-life stuff, life-or-death type of situation," Boozer said. "Any time you go through something like that, it touches home. This is just basketball at the end of the day."

Yet Boozer also has no illusions that he will be received any differently because of his family situation. There are too many fans in a crowd of more than 20,000 who want to revisit events from the summer of 2004 for that to be the case.

"It won't be the first time I've been booed," Boozer said. "It won't be the last time."

He spoke before the Jazz practiced Thursday afternoon at the Cavaliers' new $25 million training facility, just another measure of how much things have changed for Boozer's old team in the LeBron James era.

Although injures kept him from playing in Cleveland during his first two seasons with Utah, Boozer finally faced the music in March. What he heard was a chorus of jeers as he finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds in the Jazz's 82-73 loss.

There was no way Boozer could have known what to expect in that first game back. In that respect, things will be different tonight.

"It was good to definitely get it under my belt," Boozer said. "I'm sure the fans were looking forward to seeing me here so they could do what they wanted to do and I was looking forward to coming here so I could see what it would be like."

Through the season's first nine games, Boozer has made it easy to forget what he is going through at home. He came into Thursday ranked sixth in the NBA in both scoring and rebounding at 25.9 points and 12.4 rebounds a game.

Those numbers are even more impressive considering Boozer spent the end of summer working out by day and staying with his son in the hospital at night. He started the season nearly two weeks behind his teammates.

"He came in like he didn't even miss a beat," Deron Williams said. "They were limiting his minutes at first and he was ready to go. He was ready to play 40."

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said: "He was in pretty good shape right off the bat. That's always nice to see guys take care of themselves so they are ready to play regardless of what they have going on. It may have been a relief for him to be able to do that."

The greatest burden has fallen on Boozer's wife, CeCe, who must supervise Carmani's recovery from the transplant, which hopefully will provide a cure for his sickle cell disease, as well as taking care of newborn twins.

"She's been having to deal with it every day," Boozer said. "I'm over here playing ball and I get 2 1/2 hours a day to take my mind off it. Where she is, it's in her face every day. It has been very difficult for her, but she's been incredibly strong."

Carmani is still seeing doctors for checkups every other week. Once those visits are scaled back to every month, Boozer said his family plans to join him in Salt Lake City. That could come as soon as early January.

It won't be until August or September, though, that the transplant can be judged a success. For now, Carmani's immune system is rebuilding after he underwent chemotherapy prior to the transplant. The fear of germs and infection is ever-present, Boozer said.

Since the March game back to Cleveland, Boozer has watched the Cavaliers win an Eastern Conference championship and gone through the darkest days imaginable as a father. What hasn't changed is his play on the court.

"We do the same thing we did when I got here that we do today," Boozer said, "and at the same time I've got great teammates that helped me get back into the flow of things. When you put those two things together, I'm not surprised."