As reported yesterday by the Biz of Basketball, the Cleveland Cavaliers were having trouble signing free agent guard Sasha Pavlovic to a contract.  They finally got the three-year deal done yesterday according to Pavlovic's agent Marc Cornstein. Pavlovic will be paid between $4 and $5 million for each of the years on his contract, much better than the one-year $2.8 million offer he turned down.

The Cavs are happy to finally have Pavlovic in the fold, but general manager Danny Ferry still has some work to do, as reported by Chad Ford of ESPN.com:

The Cavs' other restricted free agent holdout, Anderson Varejao, remains unsigned with sources close to the negotiations claiming that the two sides are still far apart with little movement over the last week.

"For me as a leader, you want guys around you that are going to help you win ball games," Cleveland star LeBron James said. "I'm going to do what is best for the team. But at the same time you see teams regrouping and reshaping, and with our team we didn't do any reshaping, we didn't do any regrouping. You start to think a bit, 'How are we going to continue to get better?'"

"Oh, we're worse," James said. "We're not as good as we were if we have those guys. It's simple. We all know that. Those two guys area big part of our team. There's no reason to sit here and say we're better without them. I think they're a key point to our team. At the same time, we have to continue to get better while they are not here. Hopefully something happens."

It is unlikely that Pavlovic will suit up for the Cavs as they open the season tonight against the Dallas Mavericks.

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Posted by Business of Sports staff member Bill Jordan. (Visit the Biz of Football Author's Page for contact details)