Charlotte
Philip Maymin
Basketball News Services
There is only one word for a nomadic Serbian on his third team in as many months. Predrag Drobnjak is a dropnik.
He has now been the property of five different teams though he has played in just the last three seasons. Drafted back in 1997 by Washington, he never played a single game in our nation's capital. Not only they traded him to Seattle in the summer of 2001 did Peja (no, not that one) get some minutes. He has averaged about 20 per game since then, playing two years for Seattle, one year for the Clippers, and being a Bobcat in name only for the past couple of months.
He now moves on to Atlanta, where he can hopefully make a nice little home. He will be an answer to a very obscure trivia question someday.
In return, the Bobcats receive Atlanta's 2005 second round draft pick. Charlotte had given their own up in a different trade with the Clippers a few weeks ago, when Donald Sterling and Elgin Baylor were wooing Kobe and trying to get cap space to sign him. Now they've got their pick back.
Now, it's essentially as if the Bobcats moved up from the fourth slot in the draft to the second by agreeing to take Eddie House and Melvin Ely from the Clippers (it also cost them their second round draft pick but they got another one by relocating Zaza Pachulia from Orlando to Milwaukee). Not a bad deal at all!
TEAM NOTES
The Charlotte Bobcats will unveil their new team uniforms in a live event that fans can attend on Saturday, August 21, 2004, at 12 noon at SouthPark Mall.
The Associated Press writes inAccess North Georgia: The Charlotte Bobcats traded center Predrag Drobnjak to the Atlanta Hawks on Monday for a second round pick in the 2005 NBA draft.The Bobcats agreed to select Drobnjak from the Los Angeles Clippers in the expansion draft as part of the deal for the Clippers' No. 2 overall pick in the NBA draft. The Bobcats used that pick to draft Emeka Okafor. The Bobcats never had an immense interest in Drobnjak, and after sending their 2005 second-round pick to the Clippers in July for Melvin Ely and Eddie House, they were looking to get another draft selection.
Rick Bonnell ofThe Charlotte Observerwrites: The Charlotte Bobcats saved themselves about $2.5 million in salary-cap space and got back a second-round pick Monday by trading Predrag Drobnjak to the Atlanta Hawks... Bickerstaff added that this move frees up a roster spot, possibly to keep another wing player or a third point guard in November.The Bobcats plan to keep the maximum 15 players -- 12 active and three on the injured list -- but they were already filling up with guaranteed contracts.