Nearly three years after leaving NBA, Alaska’s Boozer calls it a career

The end of Carlos Boozer's basketball career came Monday with an anticlimactic announcement on ESPN: "I'm officially retired," he said.

To fans, it felt like old news. Boozer, 36, played his last season in the NBA in 2014-15. He sat out for a season before heading to China to spend the 2016-17 season with the Guangdong Southern Tigers, and his hoped-for return to the NBA this season didn't happen.

A gritty 6-foot-9 forward, Boozer succeeded at every level of the game. He won two state high school championships at Juneau-Douglas High School, won an NCAA title at Duke and won two Olympic medals with Team USA – gold in 2008, bronze in 2004.

He is one of three Alaskans to play in the NBA (Trajan Langdon and Mario Chalmers are the others), spending 13 years with four teams (Cleveland, Utah, Chicago and Los Angeles).

He averaged 16.2 points and 9.5 rebounds a game, which doesn't include the 17.1 points and 11.1 rebounds he averaged in 83 career playoff games.

[Remembering the ups and downs of Boozer's Jazz years]

Boozer enjoyed his greatest years with the Utah Jazz, including his All-Star seasons of 2007 and 2008.

Boozer's high salary and occasional injuries often made him a target of criticism during his NBA days, especially in 2004 when he surprised the Cleveland Cavaliers by signing a $68 million deal with the Utah Jazz when the Cavs believed he would stay in Cleveland. But on the court he was almost always a double-double threat.

Boozer returned to Juneau last summer to work at a basketball camp. He told the Juneau-Empire he hoped to play two more years of basketball and that his post-retirement plans included spending more time in Juneau.

"I'll be more active here with the Fastbreak Club here at the high school," he told the newspaper. "I'm getting a house. I'm looking around for a house right now. So I'll be splitting time between Miami and Juneau and going back and forth a little bit. I'm excited to get back in my community, man."