Charlotte Hornets: The Excitement of the 1996 Draft
Twenty years ago, the Charlotte Hornets traded Kobe Bryant to the Los Angeles Lakers. Yet that was the side line in real time while the 1996 Draft was going on.
The Charlotte Hornets have a lot to consider in the current draft. It will be part of a busy off season for the team. However this is not the first time the franchise has had a busy off season.
Twenty years ago the team saw Alonzo Mourning wish to leave. The franchise got a sign and trade for him to get Glen Rice, Matt Geiger, and Khalid Reeves early in the 1995-6 season.
The loss of Mourning meant that the Hornets had a huge hole in the middle. Given Mourning’s current status of Hall of Famer, it was a tremendous hole. So General Manager Bob Bass took a look at his options and the environment. The team had the 13th pick, but that was too low for a number of the centers who were drafted in 1996.
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If you want proof of how different the game of basketball was in 1996, just compare the draft class to the recent stars that have emerged in the NBA. Five centers were taken in the first fifteen picks. The draft produced Hall of Famers Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant and they went 15 and 13 respectively. Big men still ruled the day for any team not named the Chicago Bulls.
This was also the reason that Bass was uncomfortable of going into the 1996-7 season with Geiger as his starting center. You needed two quality posts. The Hornets still had Larry Johnson, but his combination with Mourning had been lethal. They needed to get back to that.
Bass was aided by another big man, Shaquille O’Neal. Unhappy with the Orlando Magic and wanting to be big in Hollywood, Shaq courted the Lakers as a free agent. There was a problem, the Lakers had little cap flexibility to bring Shaq in. They needed to dump a salary.
The natural choice was Vlade Divac, the player who Shaq would replace the moment he arrived in Los Angeles. So Bass, watching the drama intently, made his move. He offered the Lakers the 13th pick for Divac. He would get his center, Shaq would sign in LA, and the contending Orlando Magic would be mortally weakened as an Eastern Conference rival.
So the Hornets drafted Kobe Bryant for the Lakers and shipped him west for their new center Divac. The question of who the Hornets would draft in 1996 was answered by the unlikely name of Vlade Divac. Instead of a young player who would take time to develop, the Hornets had a veteran center to contribute right away.
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Looking at the current draft pool, it is unlikely that the Hornets could pull off such a move with the 22nd pick this year. There isn’t a player like Bryant that would fall far down enough that teams would start eating lines on the Hornets’ phones.
Perhaps the best thing to understand about the 1996 draft comes from the second round where the Hornets drafted Malik Rose.
Rose became the only Hornets rookie that season. He would develop into a good role player, a rebounder mostly, perhaps taking on some of the aspects of the soon-to-be-acquired Anthony Mason. Rose later signed with the Spurs as a free agent and got his championship ring despite being a little short for his position.
Next: Top Ten Hornets Draftees
Of course the bottom line of the 1996 is to be ready for anything. No fans saw the Hornets coming out of there with Divac, a far better result than we imagined at the time. Of course no one realized Kobe Bryant was one of the top 30 players of all time either.