Divac the Hornet a Strange Sight

Vlade Divac, a Charlotte Hornet.

If it still sounds strange to say, imagine the Lakers’ thoughts of seeing him as a man of teal for the first time, tonight when they play at Charlotte Coliseum.

“It’s going to be real weird,” said Nick Van Exel, Divac’s teammate for three of his seven years as a Laker. “I watched that New York game and felt kind of sad for him. Hopefully, it doesn’t go that bad for him all season long.”

Except for the two games against the Lakers.

“Then it’s OK,” Van Exel said, grinning.

That New York game was a disaster on all fronts for the Hornets, who trailed by 30 points much of the way, but particularly for Divac, the center who managed two rebounds and four points and lasted only 14 minutes. That came after he had 11 rebounds and nine points in the opener against Toronto, nice but hardly overwhelming considering the Raptors used a lot of Zan Tabak and some Sharone Wright and Benoit Benjamin.

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Coach Del Harris, on the pressure of playing a much-anticipated game before a packed house in New York:

“When you’ve coached in Indiana in high school, you’re just about ready for anything.”

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Well, maybe not anything: The pack of reporters around Shaquille O’Neal before the game was so big, about 30 or so, that the players on the same side who wanted to watch film of previous games on the TV had to switch seats. The new plan is to try to position the set and the man for proper viewing.