"Remember mistrusting Carlos Boozer? The feeling of suspicion each time he took one of his extended injury breaks? I certainly remember the columns I wrote on him. But now I have company. The Chicago media has him figured out, too.

"I was sorry to hear about Carlos Boozer's injury," Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune wrote this week. "Because I was hoping he had been benched for stinking it up again."

Rosenbloom went on to joke that Boozer earns approximately $80 million per basket.

"I was hoping that Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau had grown as sick of Boozer's act as I had," he wrote.

Wait until they've watched the act for six years.

The story came after Game 5 of the Indiana-Chicago series, in which Boozer produced only two points and five rebounds. Seems he sustained a turf toe injury. The reason I say "seems" is because with Boozer, you never know.

"Boozer said he suffered an injury to his right big toe. Of course he did, because that's part of his irritating act, as well," wrote Rosenbloom. "It's something every month with this guy. Did he buy a timeshare on the injured list? How can a guy who's that cut be that injury-prone? How can a guy who has no idea how to guard anybody get hurt so often?"

I've wondered the same things, especially since the previous super-chiseled Jazz guy was Karl Malone — who NEVER missed games.

So it goes in Boozer's peculiar world, where he plays just enough games to get the next big contract. In his first year in Chicago, he missed 23 regular-season games.

Curiously, back here in Utah, there is another big contract player that has been hurt much of the time: Andrei Kirilenko. In Boozer's six seasons with the Jazz, he missed 138 games (28 percent); in the same span, Kirilenko missed 115 games (23 percent). But you seldom see anyone calling out Kirilenko."