Gooden for Harris or Terry?

[Azn_Baller101]

CLEVELAND -- If the Cavaliers are close to agreeing to a contract with Sarunas Jasikevicius, then why are they going through with their scheduled visit with Marko Jaric?

Jaric's agent, Bill Duffy, said his client is scheduled to meet with the Cavaliers tomorrow.

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The Cavaliers might not have the salary cap space to sign the 6-foot-7, 217-pound Jaric, who is expected to command around $5 million a season.

There are two ways around that road block. One would be to carve out more cap space by trading a player and taking back only a future draft pick.

Another would be for the salary cap to increase to $51 million or $52 million, which is unlikely, according to sources.

The Cavaliers do have the cap space to sign Jasikevicius to a contract starting at $3.5 million. A league source said he thought that would happen soon. The source said the Cavaliers wouldn't have agreed to a contract with forward Donyell Marshall on Tuesday without leaving enough space to sign a point guard.

Jasikevicius' agent, Doug Neustadt, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

It appears the Cavaliers are close to getting something done with the veteran guard, who played for Maccabi Tel Aviv last year and is perhaps the top player in Europe.

They have the cap space available because the first-year contracts of both Larry Hughes and Zydrunas Ilgauskas are lower than originally thought. Hughes will play for around $10.3 million next year and Ilgauskas about $9.2 million.

Indiana is also interested in Jasikevicius, but he would be a bench player for the Pacers. They are committed to starting Jamaal Tinsley at the point. They only have the mid-level exception to spend and want to re-sign Dale Davis and James Jones. Fitting in Jasikevicius as well would be difficult.

One point guard who won't be signing with the Cavaliers is former Bowling Green product Antonio Daniels, who reportedly agreed to a five-year, $30 million deal with Washington. The Cavaliers had showed some interest in him early in the free-agent process.

Meanwhile, the 6-9 Marshall could be a bench player, like he has been the last few years, or the Cavaliers' starting power forward. His addition has fueled speculation that the Cavaliers would trade starter Drew Gooden.

One source said Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry has initiated trade talks about Gooden with the Mavericks. Dallas does have two starting-quality point guards on its roster -- Jason Terry and Devin Harris.

Ferry has supposedly spoken to three other Western Conference teams about the 6-10, 242-pounder.

If Gooden is retained, finding minutes for him, Marshall and 6-10 Anderson Varejao might be difficult for coach Mike Brown.

Gooden has just one year left on his contract, and his agent is undoubtedly already thinking about a lucrative extension. Giving Gooden away makes no sense, especially when he might be a better overall player than Marshall.

Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, they won't be announcing their free agents tomorrow after all. The league sent out a memo to teams yesterday saying that the moratorium has been extended to at least July 29.

A league spokesman said the NBA's lawyers cannot get everything done by tomorrow, which caused the league to push back the date.

''We continue to make progress going through the issues,'' NBA players union spokesman Dan Wasserman told the Associated Press. ''The goal is to have everything agreed to by (tomorrow), then to draft the documents.''




hmmm... this could be the one big move we were waiting for, they probably signed sarunas and jaric for the sole purpose of packaging them with goodne to get teams to bite on the headcase that is gooden. because if it was a straight up trade with one of our pgs for gooden would make little sense for both teams, and the cavs are still going for jaric. hmmm interesting, i hope we canget gooden and sarunas for one of our pg's and/or filler.