The following article appears in the June 2004 Magic Magazine.

The most fascinating story to emerge from this summer's NBA Expansion Draft won't just be how the Charlotte Bobcats, who begin play next season, look when it's over, but how the rest of the league looks as a result of sharing their talent with the new team in town.

Will Kobe Bryant end up with the Spurs? Can the Wizards afford one of the top free agents in the market? Will Indiana or Sacramento lose one of their key players? Sound confusing?

Pay close attention and we'll describe how creative use of the expansion draft could open the door for teams like the Spurs, Wizards and maybe even the Magic to become players in the free-agent market the next couple of summers. Names like Bryant, Rasheed Wallace and Kenyon Martin are there this summer and next year, you could be chasing Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Antoine Walker, Jamal Magliore and Shareef Abdur Rahim.

But it will take some cooperation from the Bobcats.

To understand how that's possible, you must first dispose of preconceptions all of us carried about the purpose of the expansion draft. It is no longer a matter of offering Charlotte players off the end of your bench. That is the old school way of doing business. Protect your best players and spend the next season laughing while Bobcats Coach Bernie Bickerstaff tries to figure out how to make starters of guys who only took off their warmups when it was time to shower after the game.

In the new business model, teams no longer are trying to "protect" their top players in an expansion draft, they are "exposing" them. That's why you are likely to see prominent names like Antawn Jamison, Bonzi Wells, Penny Hardaway, Brian Grant, Eddie Jones and Christian Laettner eligible to be taken by Charlotte.

Why do that? Because it helps teams get relief from salary cap situations that may be strangling them now and for years to come. If a team could entice the Bobcats into taking one of their high-salaried veterans, it could help them clear cap space now or by next summer.

If Washington, for example, could coax Charlotte into selecting Laettner that takes about $6 million off the Wizards salary cap, giving them about $10 million to play with this summer, instead of just $4 million. They go from bargain shopper to serious bidder.

San Antonio is in a similar situation. If the Spurs could get the Bobcats to take someone like Bruce Bowen off the roster, it could start a domino effect that would leave them anywhere from $13 million to $15 million under the salary cap this summer.

Is that enough to entice Bryant to wear silver and black next season?

Of course, all these moves are predicated on Charlotte being cooperative when it's time to make selections in the expansion draft. Choosing aging veterans with big salaries doesn't seem to follow the blueprint that Bickerstaff set for the Bobcats months ago.

"We want to build through the draft and go young," said Bickerstaff, who doubles as the team's general manager. "We want young, hungry competitive guys who want to prove what they can do in the NBA. We will give them the chance to show the world what they can do.

"So why would he help out the Wizards or the Spurs or anyone for that matter, by taking guys like Laettner or Bowen off their hands? Because there could be incentives attached to each one of those deals. NBA rules allow teams to offer draft picks and up to $3 million in cash as incentives for the Bobcats to select a certain player.

For example, Washington could tell the Bobcats they will give them a first-round draft pick this year or sometime in the future, along with $3 million, if they would take Laettner off their hands. That is how valuable some teams view cap relief.

"We're going to have some flexibility because of teams wanting help with their salary cap," said Gary Brokaw, the former Magic personnel director who now is doing the same job for Charlotte. "We won't know for sure until the lists are released the first week in May, but there might be six teams, there might be as many as 10 that want some help. That gives us some very interesting decisions to make.

"There are also a few teams willing to offer the Bobcats incentives not to take certain players. Indiana, Sacramento and Memphis, for example, have a roster full of young talent. In each case, that talent is finally maturing together and management there is reluctant to break it up.

Because teams can only protect eight players, Memphis might have to expose some of that young talent, perhaps a player like Stromile Swift, who they really want to keep. They could ask Charlotte to pass on Swift and instead give the Bobcats a first-round pick or cash.

And there is even one more way the Bobcats can help out teams and themselves while sticking to the Bickerstaff plan of building with youth.

Some teams might want to trade a player, but don't want anyone back. Unfortunately, that can't be done under the current rules because if you trade a player making $7 million, for example, you have to take someone back who makes within 15 percent of that.

However, if you expose that player in the expansion draft, Charlotte can select him, then pass him on to another team with enough cap space to take him.

"The best thing about all this is that we're the only team involved in expansion so we can broker any kind of deal we want," Brokaw said. "Normally, you have two teams coming in at the same time and you don't know what the other guy is going to do so you have to sit back and wait, but we can start talking to teams May 5 and have more than a month to look at deals before the expansion draft takes place.

"Perhaps the only negative in all of this for the Bobcats is whether the fans of Charlotte will buy the three- to five-year building program. This isn't the same city that fell in love with the expansion Hornets in 1988 because they were Charlotte's first professional team.

That relationship soared, then soured and eventually ownership moved the team to New Orleans. In the meantime, the NFL came to Charlotte and the Panthers created a frenzy when they reached the Super Bowl last season.

There is genuine concern that if the Bobcats don't put a quality product on the floor quickly, they may not sell a lot of tickets.

"The people in this town are fair-weather fans for the most part," said Charlotte Observer writer Rick Bonnell, who covered the Hornets from their inception in 1988 and has helped with coverage of the Panthers. "I have a feeling there is going to be a wait-and-see attitude. If the team gets really good, really fast the way the Panthers did, everyone will jump on board.

"But a lot of people are cynical because of what happened with the Hornets. They don't want to fall in love and then see the team take off again. The expansion draft hold some pretty interesting possibilities and if some of those come true, the Bobcats could set themselves up very nicely. It will be interesting to see how it all develops.

"That is the only real certainty in the whole matter."