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Good to have guard back, but a month late
By Patrick McManamon
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Wednesday, Oct 31, 2007
INDEPENDENCE: One day before the Cavaliers' season starts, Sasha Pavlovic joined the fold.
In reality, what he did was fold.
Like an old pair of underwear.
The day before the opener, Pavlovic blinked, and agreed to a contract that will pay him between $4 million and $5 million per year.
It's a good deal, and better than the one-year qualifying offer Pavlovic could have signed, but it's also a deal he and his agent and the Cavs could have agreed to a month ago. All Pavlovic missed was a month of learning a new offense.
Pavlovic's agent will say, of course, that this deal was not possible before training camp started. What else would he say? I had my guy miss all this time because I felt like it?
OK, there surely were tweaks that gave Pavlovic a little more up-front money, but there is no Supreme Court decision that states tweaks cannot be agreed to prior to training camp.
Because there were only tweaks, it's almost more maddening that they weren't worked out in pre-camp negotiations. This deal isn't that radically different from the ones that were being offered prior to camp.
The job of agents, though, is pretty simple: Get your client the most money possible. It's the American way in pro sports. And the higher the contract, the more the agent makes. Imagine that.
In NBA economics, this contract is about right for Pavlovic fair for him because of the money, and fair for the team because the Cavs value salary cap flexibility in the future, and this deal provides that.
Why that kind of deal could not be hammered out prior to training camp will forever be a mystery right up there with those ''Do not mow'' signs on highways.
Contracts pretty much come down to ''want to,'' as in the player decides he's had enough and he ''wants to'' sign.
If a contract is substantially the same as an earlier offer, then it's a pretty simple conclusion that the ''want to'' was missing a month ago, when this could and should have gotten done.
Make no mistake, signing Pavlovic is a positive step. It would not be surprising if his former fellow holdout Anderson Varejao caves . . . signs in the next day or three as well. There's simply nothing more for him to gain by sitting any longer.
That would be another boost for a team that needed a boost. The past two days, all the talk around town was that the Cavs were in trouble without the missing two. Not since the hunt for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has so much energy been expended on two missing guys.
Too, the Cavs played in the preseason like the absence of Butch and Sundance had doomed them to a lottery pick.
Yes, preseason is preseason, which means it's not the regular season and therefore dangerous to use in drawing many conclusions.
Still . . .
The last three games featured a 16-point loss to the Orlando Magic in China, a 33-point loss to the Toronto Raptors, and a 25-point loss to the Boston Celtics. The Cavs averaged a paltry 83.6 points.
Numbers for individual players did not exactly calm nerves.
Larry Hughes shot 39 percent.
Shannon Brown had five assists and 20 turnovers.
Devin Brown was eight-for-41 for a robust 19 percent shooting.
The team shot 39.4 percent.
And coach Mike Brown lamented the lack of consistent defensive intensity.
Oh, yeah, the early schedule is brutal, too.
So the Cavs needed this signing, if only to change the vibe.
But the payoff will not come in the short term, meaning in tonight's season opener against the Dallas Mavericks. The payoff will be long term when Pavlovic and Varejao (who will sign) work their way back into things.
In the short term, Pavlovic gets a lot richer by signing a deal he could have signed a month ago.
The recent past says that he missed a month of working in a new offense and learning the nuances of a new system. A month that put him behind and has his team trying to beat the Mavericks in the opener without him, then looking at a West Coast swing with him still watching.
Same can be said for Varejao.
Pretty easy to see who is hurt most by this contract snit.
Patrick McManamon can be reached at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com. Read his blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/mcmanamon/.
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