Has the NBA seen the last of Carlos Boozer?

So it has come to this.

Though it’s unclear where we stand on publicly acceptable opinions of Carlos Boozer at the moment, the fact that we may have seen the last of him in an NBA uniform is still fairly shocking. Though it won’t ultimately decide his fate, it’s difficult to suss out exactly where the NBA’s vociferous hive mind of hyper-informed fans has come down on the topic of Boozer’s current worth to an NBA team.

ALSO ON HOOPSHABIT: NBA Finals History: Ranking The Last 50 Champions

Boozer’s value is at an all-time low, sure, but pinning down why he suddenly ranks so low as to not be considered for even the most menial of NBA roles is tricky. Boozer seems to have reached a point where, tired of making fun of him and his many shortcomings, some seem to have taken to defending the former Blue Devil. Like an infinity mirror, his relative strengths and weaknesses are reflected back and forth on one another recursively until, before you know it, making fun of his eyebrows isn’t cool anymore.

Boozer plays no defense. Boozer has a solid midrange jumper. Boozer screams every three seconds. Boozer is a good teammate. On and on the conversation goes (calling it a debate would suggest an inaccurate amount of passion behind the subject), until before long, the offseason is trudging into late August and–per ProBasketballTalk’s Sean Highkin’s article citing ESPN’s Marc Stein— this former All-NBA player is considering playing in China due to a seeming lack of interest stateside.

More from NBA

That Boozer’s phone wasn’t blowing up during the free agency bonanza earlier this summer was certainly no surprise. In the ultra-modern era of today’s pace and space NBA, Boozer’s still solid workmanship between the painted are and the three-point arc is more antiquity than necessity. Defense has never been a calling card of his, but the rapidly declining lateral quickness and increasingly egregious and frequent push off fouls that Boozer has worked into his repertoire make the lack of local interest even more understandable.

While Boozer put up a perfectly respectable 11.8 points and 6.8 rebounds per game last year in only 23.8 minutes per contest, the advanced stats tell a much crueler tale. After posting a grisly True Shooting Percentage of 48.9% in 2013-14, Boozer recovered only slightly last season to the tune of a 51.7% clip, per Basketball-Reference.com. Coupled with an icky defensive rating of 109 and a shot chart straight out of 1990’s orthodoxy, it becomes even more evident why front offices league-wide are skittish about bringing Boozer aboard.

Still, if you’re a general manager with any kind of holes in your front court, you could do a whole lot worse for a backup power forward in a limited role at, say, 15-18 minutes per game. Couldn’t you?

Perhaps the NBA’s various brain trusts have evolved in recent years. Maybe instead of teams bringing hard working, relatively ineffective veterans on in mentor roles, the harsh calculus of the cutting-edge efficiency sweeping the league has spread even to the fringes of roster population. Perhaps front offices would rather splurge on long-term projects that can be more easily molded into an analytically informed vision for the future, making a signing like Boozer a less justifiable expense, even with the looming cap increase.

For the record, I believe Carlos Boozer will play in the NBA again at some point. His heyday is most certainly behind him, but he’s also not an abjectly terrible NBA player. Though if the NBA has truly seen the last of Carlos Boozer, it probably says almost as much about the direction the league is heading as it does about his own decline. Almost.

Next: Every NBA Franchise's Mount Rushmore

NBA: Is Carlos Boozer Really Headed to China?

By Jameson Miller | Aug 24, 2015

More from Hoops Habit