Carlos Boozer(notes), who is making $12.6 million in the final season of his contract, has attracted interest, but sources said the Jazz have yet to enter any substantive trade talks involving the forward. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan has told management he’d prefer to keep Boozer for the season to help with the team’s playoff push, but ownership wants to avoid paying as much luxury tax as possible.

Rival executives think the Jazz have been asking for too much for Boozer, and that most teams who trade for him would want assurances they have a good chance to re-sign him over the summer.

Boozer is averaging more than 19 points and 10 rebounds and could prove to be a difference-maker for a contending team. The Detroit Pistons discussed trading Tayshaun Prince(notes) for Boozer over the summer, but one West executive said the Jazz wanted only to redirect Prince to the Portland Trail Blazers and now lack another team with salary-cap room to do so.

Via Yahoo. Well, I couldn't figure out how to add any commentary if I made this a FanShot, so here ya go.

If the Bulls really want to add themselves a big man, the Jazz are offering one. Less obvious is how we could get them under the tax, especially without putting ourselves over it.

I’ve got Utah at $4.4M over the tax line. Get them under that line and it not only saves them about $3M in salary they don’t have to pay, it saves them $4.4M in tax payments to the league. Plus they’ll probably get a couple million more in escrow and tax distributions from the league. So we’re talking maybe $10M worth of savings or something close.

One solution is Memphis. They’re about $3M under the cap, and they are apparently looking for “bench scoring”.

For example, Salmons to Memphis for Steven Hunter ($3M or so) while we trade Tyrus and Pargo to the Jazz gets us Boozer and gets the Jazz under the tax. Unfortunately it won’t happen because we take back $2.9M in extra salary, which puts us over the tax. We’re only about $1M under the tax line ourselves. Plus we’d have to add at least one more guy to get to the Roster minimum.

So um… if you add a fourth team that can get the Bulls under the tax threshold, you can do it. But we’re getting into highly improbably territory