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Official 2014-15 Charlotte Hornets Thread

RollWave35 said:
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stfu, kobe
 
Just shows he's scared of the 2014-15 Hornets!

You are right though. Fuck him. Nobody traded on draft day would be told that by the team that drafted him, but it's even worse in this case since Kobe's team had already indicated he wouldn't play in Charlotte.
 
RollWave35 said:
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That's not the case at all, actually. That trade has become so overwrought by Hornets fans over time that the perception isn't close to reality.

"The deal was actually done a day ahead of time, and it was Vlade for a player to be named," said Bill Branch, the Hornets' head scout at the time who still operates out of Charlotte as a scout for the Seattle-now-Oklahoma City Sonics. "If I remember right, they didn't even tell us who they wanted us to pick until about five minutes before the pick was made. So it was never a matter of us actually drafting Kobe."

Branch scouted Bryant twice for the Hornets while Bryant was at Lower Merion H.S., but he said that the Hornets "never even considered him" as a player they would draft and keep. Bass was an old-school GM who liked to deal but didn't usually gamble on young players.
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The trade was more about the Lakers' pursuit of Shaquille O'Neal in free agency and the Hornets' need to acquire a center than it was about Bryant.

In order to get far enough under the salary cap to make a valid pitch to O'Neal, the Lakers needed to unload Divac's contract, preferably to a team under the salary cap and preferably for a draft pick. The Hornets had traded Alonzo Mourning the previous year, were without a bona fide center, and were well under the cap after renouncing the rights to free agent Kenny Anderson. They would trade Larry Johnson to New York for Anthony Mason later that summer.

The Hornets reasoned that they could come out of the draft with no better than Vitaly Potapenko or Todd Fuller if they drafted a center, and jumped at the chance to trade the 13th pick for Divac.
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The Lakers might have been high on Bryant, but this was more about clearing up the cap room to make a run at O'Neal, whose contract was up in Orlando. Marc Fleisher, Divac's agent, remembers that the Lakers had a trade worked out to send Divac to Atlanta for the 25th pick if anything fell through with the Hornets. Had that scenario played out, there's little or no way that Bryant would have fallen all the way to the 25th pick, so Bryant and the Lakers couldn't have orchestrated anything.

"There were three teams involved at first -- Charlotte, Atlanta and Sacramento," Fleisher said. "Sacramento didn't work out for whatever reason, and then it was basically Charlotte or Atlanta. They asked us where Vlade would rather go, and he said Charlotte."
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Or....

Tuesday, on the first day of NBA free-agency, Kobe Bryant decided to get something off his chest on Twitter: That 18 years ago the Hornets told him “they had no use for me,” so they were trading him to the Los Angeles Lakers. Apparently time has eroded future Hall-of-Famer Bryant’s memory.

I was there, covering the 1996 draft and the ensuing trade for the Charlotte Observer. To suggest Hornets general manager Bob Bass or anyone else in the organization rejected Bryant is absurd.
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The Hornets were more or less pawns in all this. Tellem wouldn’t let some lottery teams -– including the New Jersey Nets and the Hornets -– work out Bryant, a high school player from suburban Philadelphia. About a week before the draft Bass asked me what I was hearing about all this. He suspected the same thing I did, that Tellem was trying to direct Bryant to a team outside the top picks.
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This got a little complicated when Divac threatened to retire, rather than report to the Hornets. I asked Bass what he’d do if Divac didn’t relent and Bass said he’d keep Bryant.

That put Tellem in a nasty mood. Eighteen years later I remember him screaming at me over the phone from Southern California that Bryant would be a Laker no matter what.
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http://blogs.charlotte.com/inside_t...s-tweet-revisionist-history-at-its-worst.html

Kobe's a bitch, sorry.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
No, the calculation method below the graph says that it does include the cap holds for first round picks.
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The workable cap number is around 15M for the Hornets, when all cap holds are calculated and assuming they intend to keep McBob's Bird rights by not renouncing him (they do). This site is more accurate: http://data.shamsports.com/content/pages/data/salaries/bobcats.jsp

ETA: You get to ~15M in cap space by adding up all the fully guaranteed salaries (which now includes Taylor, but does not include Haywood, who was traded = ~41M) and adding the cap hold of McRoberts and the two picks (~8M). Renounce everyone else (you can get around cap holds for open roster spots by using the "minimum salary" exception to fill out your bench), then subtract that total from the projected salary cap (~64M). 64M - 49M = 15M. This is a very, very healthy cap situation because they aren't paying a single dollar in dead money (beyond the amnestied Ty Thomas deal), or for players they'd prefer not to have on the team. Cho has done a wonderful job in three years. With this cap situation, they can afford to overpay for an impact free agent, which is the only way they are going to get one.
 
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I bet the Hornets could convince Phil to trade JR to Charlotte. Think of the fun of having Born Ready and JR on the Hornets.
 
Our own Rick Bonnell on the Gordon deal:

 
ArlingtonDeac said:
get Metta too. And I bet Stephen Jackson is available.
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Jack would definitely like to come back. He said so on First Take during the playoffs.

Its insanity that Hayward is getting a max deal before Lebron signs (or at all). Cleveland and Utah are showing why they will remain bad.
 
RJKarl said:
Jack would definitely like to come back. He said so on First Take during the playoffs.

Its insanity that Hayward is getting a max deal before Lebron signs (or at all). Cleveland and Utah are showing why they will remain bad.
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The Cavs haven't even secured a meeting with Bron Bron. Why the hell would they wait for him to sign before going after their other targets?

THINK
 
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