After exceeding expectations last season with the young Utah Jazz, Mo Williams may not spot in Jerry Sloan?s? lineup.

This off-season, the Jazz spent nearly $150-million on new contracts to Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Gordan Giricek, and Carlos Arroyo, not to mention the Jazz already have two point guards in Raul Lopez and Arroyo.

Williams' agent, Mark Bartelstein, is said to be shopping Williams around to some point guard deficient teams.

The Jazz have tendered a qualifying offer to Williams, meaning they can match any offer the 21-year-old point guard receives.

The Pistons had until Thursday to match Utah's offer but officially let nothing else stand in the way yesterday when they waived their right to match the six-year, $50-million offer sheet Okur signed with the Jazz this month, leaving Okur free to play at Utah next season. The move became a foregone conclusion when the Pistons agreed to contracts with forwards Antonio McDyess and Rasheed Wallace.

"It was nothing more than a formality," team vice president John Hammond said Monday. "After signing Rasheed and Antonio, we had no room to sign Mehmet."

Last week, Okur told the Zaman newspaper in Turkey that he was happy to be going to the Jazz.

"I had a really hard term last year with the Detroit uniform," he said.

The Jazz's losing streak has been broken in the free-agent market.

Mehmet Okur, one of four restricted free agents from another team to sign with Utah over the past two summers, will become the first one to actually join the Jazz on Tuesday. The Detroit Pistons have waived their right to match Utah's six-year, $50-million contract offer to Okur, an NBA source said Sunday, allowing the Jazz to add the 6-foot-11 center to their roster a couple of days early.

The Pistons' 15-day matching period would have lapsed at 10 p.m. MDT Thursday, and Detroit president Joe Dumars had made it clear that he had no intention of trying to slash his payroll in order to free up the salary-cap space necessary to retain Okur. Allowing the Jazz to sign the Turkish center before the deadline is apparently a courtesy being extended by Dumars to Okur, agent Marc Fleisher and the Jazz. Pistons coach Larry Brown is a close friend and former   boss to Kevin O'Connor, the Jazz's senior vice president of basketball operations.

This trade with Orlando for Drew Gooden and two others seems to have ended any chance that Cleveland would match the offer sheet Carlos Boozer signed with Utah.

"We left the option open initially because we could," Cavaliers' general manager Jim Paxson said.

"Realistically, in the landscape of what happened to the teams that have room, it wasn't worth wasting my time on."

Meanwhile, coach Paul Silas may have come up with a simple solution to his backcourt mess:  He might play point guards Jeff McInnis and Eric Snow together.

"There's a lot of things we could do with them," Silas said. "Certainly, that's one of them. I like ball players. I don't put labels on players. I played David Wesley and Baron Davis together with the Hornets."

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The Sacramento Kings re-signed forward Darius Songaila Friday, according to Kings President of Basketball Operations Geoff Petrie.

?I?m looking forward to having Darius back next season,? Petrie said in a news release. ?He proved himself to be a solid contributor for our team last season. I feel he has a great future in the league. I?m looking forward to him continuing to help us succeed. I think that his game and contribution will continue to grow with our team.?

LINK

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Timberwolves agreed to a multiyear contract with key backup Fred Hoiberg on Friday.

Hoiberg averaged 6.7 points and 3.4 rebounds in 79 games, including a career-best 46.5 percent shooting. He was especially valuable when Wally Szczerbiak spent much of the season on the injured list.

Last season was his first with the T-Wolves after stints with Indiana and Chicago.

LINK

SALT LAKE CITY - Free agent Jarron Collins re-signed with the Utah Jazz on Friday.

The 6-foot-11 center has spent all three of his NBA seasons in Utah, which picked him in the second round in 2001 out of Stanford.

Collins has started 103 of the 176 games he?s played for the Jazz. He missed much of his second season with a knee injury, but came back last season and took over the starting job when Greg Ostertag struggled with inconsistency down the stretch.

LINK

According to Utah TV station KSL Greg Ostertag is venturing away from the Jazz after nine seasons and will sign a contract with the Sacramento Kings tomorrow.

Ostertag became expendable once the Jazz signed big men Mehmet Okur and Carlos Boozer to offer sheets, and re-signed their own Jaron Collins.

A press conference has been scheduled for tomorrow.

The Jazz are making some decisions.

The Jazz have reached an agreement with a multi year deal with forward/center Jarron Collins.

Another Utah big man may be leaving Utah not staying. Greg Ostertag, a 9 year Utah player, may be looking for a new team.

"It's probably gonna be difficult for us to re-sign Greg," O'Connor said. "I think Greg, obviously, has some people (other teams) that are looking at him, and I think he continues to want to explore what's out there," he added. "And we got in a position to where we wanted to get another big guy, and he (Ostertag) wasn't ready to make a decision."
 
'Collins, selected in the second round of the 2001 draft out of Stanford University, started 68 of 70 as a rookie. He started seven of 22 games the following season, but went down with a devastating knee injury involving tears of both the anterior cruciate and medial collateral knee ligaments. The 25-year-old did return to play 81 games last season, however, and started 31 of those.'
     
"Inconsistency," Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, who was not opposed to bringing back Ostertag, said a few days ago, "is the name of (Ostertag's) game."

'With Collins signing Tuesday, then, and restricted free agent guard Gordan Giricek scheduled to sign his four-year, $16 million contract on Monday, O'Connor's work in the NBA's 2004 summer free-agency market is almost done.'

To: Cavaliers Fans
From: Gordon Gund

I know last week?s developments with respect to Carlos Boozer are a source of extreme disappointment for you. I want to assure you that I feel exactly the same way. Like you, I believed in Carlos.

Several days have now gone by. This has helped me to gain perspective. I hope this letter will do the same for you.

First, Jim Paxson has taken a tremendous amount of criticism in the media for what happened. As the team owner, I made the decision not to pick up the option on Carlos? contract. Any criticism should be directed to me, not to Jim Paxson. I want to be very clear that any fault is mine.

Up until late last week when the trust was broken, I believed in Carlos Boozer, the player, and Carlos Boozer, the person. That is why I tried to do what he said he wanted. We tried to do right by him, by the team and by you in trusting in his repeated insistence that if we showed him respect, he would show respect to us.

Carlos and his agent first approached us in December of 2003, stating his desire for financial security as well as his desire to remain in Cleveland and be a key part of the future of this franchise. He and his agent made it very clear that if we respected them, and provided the security he was looking to gain, he would respect us. Given his record on the court, with the franchise, and in the community, we had every reason to believe his commitment.

Over the course of several months, we had multiple meetings that involved Carlos, his wife and his agent. In our most recent meeting on June 30, Jim Paxson and I told Carlos we had two options. He could play this year on his existing contract and test the market for free agency next year, or we could elect not to exercise the option if we had the understanding with him that as soon as legally possible he would negotiate a contract with us for the maximum we could pay him under league rules.

I told him that as we could not have an agreement at that time given the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, we would have to trust one another?s intentions. I said I define trust as his intention to stay in Cleveland and enter into a long term contract with us as soon as possible under the league rules. In that meeting, we were clear with him that he could make more money in the open market a year from now than we could pay him by redoing his contract this year. I told him he needed to understand that and we did not want him to later think we had taken advantage of him. Jim told him, ?There are at least seven teams that have cap space right now who will want to pay you more than we can now. We don?t want to lose you. Why would we not pick up the option?? Carlos said ?Because we'd like long term security and we want to stay in Cleveland.? Carlos went on to say that he was happy to be a Cavalier and never indicated any concern with his role on the team or his relationship with Coach Silas.

Carlos, his wife and his agent ? all of whom were in that room -- knew what our maximum ability would be to pay him. Both Carlos and his wife responded that they wanted financial security now and therefore were anxious to pursue the second option of entering into a long term contract with us as soon as possible and that they would live with any consequences from this decision.

Carlos? agent then said he wanted to go to another room to talk with his client and his wife alone which they did. When they returned, his agent said he had again explained everything to them so that they understood everything involved and said that their thinking had not changed.

Jim Paxson then told him, ?We'd like to begin, as soon as permissible, to negotiate an agreement that we can sign on July 14th.? Carlos responded, ?That?s exactly what I want. I want to get this done as quickly as we can.?

Over time Carlos had told Jim and me repeatedly, ?If you show respect for me, I will show respect for you.? So, in the June 30 meeting, I reminded him of that and said, ?We are all counting on what you said in earlier meetings and again today.? He responded, ?That?s right and you can trust me on that.? I asked if we could all trust each other? Carlos, his wife and agent each responded ?Yes.? At that point, believing so strongly in Carlos, I said we would not pick up his option. Our intent, as soon as we could do so, was to re-do his contract. The quotes you saw in the media July 1 about his desire to remain here were entirely consistent with what he told us.

(click to continue)

Carlos Boozer has had enough of the character assassination that has pounded him since last week's announcement that the Utah Jazz have offered him $68 million over six years.

Boozer has been accused of lying and backstabbing the team and its fans because he allegedly told the Cavaliers he would remain in Cleveland. As a result, the organization allowed him to become a free agent, with the intent to sign him to the mid-level exemption of $42 million over six years.

According to sources within the Cavs' organization, Boozer told team officials that if they didn't pick up his option, he would sign with them.

Boozer, speaking exclusively to The Plain Dealer by telephone Monday, said that is not true and he wants to set the record straight.

"I didn't make a prior agreement. And if I did, I would've stayed here," Boozer said. "For them [Cavaliers] taking shots at my character is incredibly wrong, and I don't understand that. I thought I had a great relationship with them. Maybe they're trying to save face or trying to make up stuff and kill my character. And if that's the road they want to take, that's OK."

Everything was apparently fine when Cavs management met with Boozer, his wife CeCe and agent Rob Pelinka on June 30. These were friendlier times, when the two sides were prepared to talk about Boozer's future with the organization. The only thing that is clear about this meeting is that the Cavs decided not to pick up the option on the last year of Boozer's contract, which was worth about $700,000. This is where things get cloudy.

"I assumed they were going to pick up my option and work something out for the long term, but they went another route," Boozer said. "I was shocked that they didn't pick up my option. I left the meeting excited because this meant that I was going to get a long-term contract."

Boozer was surprised the Cavs didn't pick up his option because he said management gave him every indication in earlier informal conversations that they would.

Boozer said he had no idea why they Cavs didn't pick up the option.

Amid a mountain of criticism, Rob Pelinka, has resigned as Carlos Boozer?s agent.

 "Rob works for a corporation called SFX, which felt like the negative publicity was hurting their company," the source said. SFX "gave him an ultimatum: Leave [Boozer] or be fired. He had to what was best for him."

Boozer who has been demonized in the media for apparently reneging on a gentlemen?s agreement with Cav?s owner, Jim Paxson, has declined to comment publicly on the ongoing controversy.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have chance to match the 6-year $68-million dollar contract offered up by the Utah Jazz, however they will most likely let him go as keeping Boozer would force them to dump a few players to clear cap room.