Jazz Match Blazer Offer for Millsap, Pack Boozer's Bags

The remaining dominoes in the notable NBA free agency set are starting to fall.

Thursday night the Utah Jazz matched Portland's front-heavy $32 million offer to restricted free agent forward Paul Millsap. The move accomplishes the Jazz's goal of keeping Millsap, who's younger, more reliable, and has more upside and oomph than his counterpart, Carlos Boozer. The move also means that just as Boozer has indicated to the press recently, his bags are packed, he just needs a destination.

The question is, what are the next pieces to fall?

Retaining Millsap effectively ends any further moves the Jazz might make this year, and signals a probable youth movement coming for the franchise, though it's likely to continue to contend for a playoff spot in the West. If the Jazz can find an eager taker who, for some reason, doesn't recognize that the Jazz have absolutely zero leverage with Boozer, they might be able to field a squad that excels this year's rather pedestrian output, feared though they were during their regular season winning streak.

For the Blazers, though, this latest failure to upgrade their roster has to draw the question: Where does Pritchard go from here? The Blazers made no significant moves on draft night for the first time in years. They failed to land Hedo Turkoglu. They failed to land Paul Millsap. It's one thing to not pursue agents and thereby not land any, but to make multiple pitches and come away empty-handed, even if they had no control over the Millsap deal after extending their offer, is more than a bit disappointing. This team was looking to upgrade its roster in pursuit of becoming a legitimate title contender, which we all expected they would become as the roster developed and Pritchard continued upgrading. But now things have grown stagnant. So of course the next logical place to look is currently frustrated Lakers free agent forward Lamar Odom.

However, for whatever reason, teams are staying away from Odom for the most part. It's almost as if no one wants to be the one that Odom uses just to get the contract he wants from LA, where he obviously wants to be. If Portland wants to upgrade with the last significant free agent on the market (sorry David Lee, sorry Glen Davis), it's going to need to strike hard and fast and probably make the kind of deal it has consistently shied away from for the last few years: a long, expensive, top heavy contract to a player that does not have a reputation as being reliable.

Boozer, meanwhile, decided not to opt out this season, wanting to collect the money he could in a limited buyer's market, supposedly in pursuit of the big money available next year in the Free Agency Summer of Doom 2010. But Boozer isn't even in the top two tiers of next year's class, and after his history of injuries, his lack of physical play, and the ugliness surrounding his situation in Utah, you have to wonder who's going to come calling the Jazz. In the end, that could end up hurting everyone in this situation. The Jazz could end up with the scraps off of a bottom feeding team just trying to clear cap space, or worse, giving Boozer away to a team without any great assets. And Boozer could end up on a middling club that won't raise his free agency value and could end up hurting his prospects in 2010.

We're getting to the end of the hunt, but who's going to catch what is still very much still up in the air.