RealGM

Okay I'm really bringing this back here, but I was reading wikipedia and the summary for the Carlos Boozer - Cleveland Cavaliers situation reads as:

"After the 2003-04 NBA season, the Cavaliers had the option of allowing him to become a restricted free agent, or keeping him under contract for one more year at a $695,000 salary. The Cavaliers claim to have reached an understanding with Boozer and his agent on a deal for approximately $39 million over 6 years, which he would sign if they let him out of his current deal...

The Jazz had participated in the free agent market in previous years and had failed in attempts to sign Corey Maggette, Jason Terry and Elton Brand... Boozer signed their offer sheet, and Cleveland had the option to match, but were already over the salary cap, and so could match only up to the Mid-level exception, thus they 'chose' not to re-sign him. Boozer joined the Utah Jazz in July 2004 for six years and a total of $70 million."

Is the bolded part accurate? I'm not familiar with the old CBA at all, but under it teams were only allowed to "match" for up to the full value of the MLE?

As an Early Bird free agent, the most that Cleveland could spend on him was what the Early Bird exception allowed - a contract starting at the value of the MLE. However, Utah gave him more than that, since they were not bound by such a limitation. The same thing happened with Giulbert Arenas. It was a loophole closed in the last CBA.

They chose not to, or they couldn't... I don't quite understand.

They could have cleared cap room and re-signed him, but, without doing so, they were not able to re-sign him. Since they chose not to clear cap room (it was vaguely possible - Ilgauskas to Atlanta, for a start), they in essence chose not to re-sign Boozer, even though choosing to do so would have meant a lot of hard work and assets given up.