Divac Is Stirring Up Hornet’s Nest With Retirement Threat

It’s not a trade, it’s a standoff.

The Charlotte Hornets indicated Thursday they plan to go ahead with the deal. Vlade Divac sent word again through his agent he’ll become a former NBA player on the spot. Kobe Bryant, caught in the middle, waits and hopes it happens, his dream and the Lakers’ one and the same.

It will be resolved Monday, if there is no lockout, when the salary cap increases and the Divac-for-Bryant swap goes through. Maybe.

“I talked to Vlade about it,” agent Marc Fleisher said after speaking to his client in Germany, Divac’s latest stop with the Yugoslavian Olympic team in preparation for the Atlanta Games. “If he’s traded Monday, he will announce his retirement Tuesday.

“Vlade feels as strong about this now as he felt before.”

Now comes a test of the Hornets’ resolve as they are left to decide if this is merely an emotional pang from an athlete who doesn’t want to leave a town he loves or a threat that will become reality at their expense. Getting in some practice in case it’s the latter, fans and media members put team officials on a skewer Thursday, wondering how they could promise to add a big man, draft two guards in the first round, and then have a trade for a 7-footer explode in their face.

By then, it had become evident that the Hornets drafted Bryant, the 17-year-old high school senior from Lower Merion, Pa., for the Lakers, his preferred team all along. One problem. Divac RSVP’d “No” to the celebration.

Nothing is official, so the Hornets could still back out. That would mean finding a new taker, which wouldn’t be difficult considering Bryant’s talent, but would no doubt run into trouble when the trade talks get around to the Hornets asking, “So which talented, young 7-footer will you be sending us?”

Keep Bryant in Charlotte? If he grows six inches this weekend. Until then, another swingman, loaded with potential or not, is the last thing the Hornets need.

“I think it’ll happen eventually,” said Bob Bass, the Hornets’ vice president of basketball operation. “There’s nothing to say that it’s off the table.”

And if the deal does fall through?

“I don’t mind saying this: If it doesn’t work out, we still have a heck of a player in Kobe Bryant,” Bass said.

Bryant’s agent, Arn Tellem, doesn’t mind saying this:

“Kobe is extremely excited about the prospect about playing for the Lakers. This is where he wanted to be and when the dust settles, this is where he will be.

“I can’t speak for Vlade. But if anyone should have a reason to complain, it’s Kobe because he sacrificed a higher draft pick to make this happen.”

In other words, Tellem heard that a team was going to pick Bryant in the lottery, maybe New Jersey at No. 8, and scared them off, perhaps with the threat of Bryant jumping to Europe, considering he speaks fluent Italian from living there when his father played pro ball overseas.

Tellem spoke with Laker officials Thursday. But no one from the Forum had called Fleisher or made an attempt to contact Divac--”I’m sure the Lakers don’t want to hear what Vlade has to say,” Fleisher said, accurately sensing a degree of anger.

The bigger surprise, though, was that the Hornets similarly chose to keep their distance. No conversation. No attempt to invite Divac to Charlotte, give him the grand tour, show him why this would be a great situation for him. It could be the college recruiting he never had.

It could also be a waste of time.

“I’d be happy to let them do it,” Fleisher said. “I want them to do it. I’m certainly going to encourage them to do it because I think it would be good for him.

“But that’s not going to happen. Vlade has given no indication he would even entertain the possibility of going there for a visit.”

He just wants to stay in Los Angeles, where he feels he can be happy and his wife can pursue an acting career. Happy, but not as rich.

Divac would be walking away from more than $9.5 million if he retires with two years left on the contract--$4.133 million for 1996-97, $4.233 million for the next season, and a clause in his deal that calls for a 15% bonus should he be traded. That’s $1.255 million, for moving expenses and all.

Having earned $14.5 million from basketball alone the last four seasons, he says he doesn’t need the money. Not as much as he needs to be with his wife and kids in Los Angeles.

NBA Notes

The NBA and the players’ union met Thursday for a third consecutive day of talks aimed at completing a labor contract and averting a lockout this weekend. The sides negotiated for more than eight hours in New York, with the talks continuing into Thursday night. . . . The Portland Trail Blazers acquired the draft rights to Jason Sasser from the Sacramento Kings for undisclosed future considerations. Sasser, a 6-foot-7 forward from Texas Tech, was selected by the Kings in the second round of Wednesday’s NBA draft, the 31st selection overall.

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NEW FACES

* KOBE BRYANT

Prep phenom and prospective Laker is called a once-in-a-lifetime kind of talent who is “way beyond his years in coordination, maturity.” C6

* LORENZEN WRIGHT

The Clippers’ top draft choice learned a thing or two about persistence from his father, and his new team could be the beneficiary. C7