Tidjane who?

This was my immediate reaction and quite likely yours to the Charlotte Hornets picking French forward Tidjane Salaün last Wednesday night, the most notable of a recent flurry of moves the local NBA team has made.

With the options of trading back or choosing a well-known college player like Connecticut’s Donovan Clingan, Kentucky’s Rob Dillingham or Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht, the Hornets instead took the third-best draft prospect from France and the youngest player in the draft (he’s still just 18).

I still don’t love the idea. Salaün strikes me as more of a major project than a major prospect. But I will say this — the Hornets’ new folks at the top, who are very young themselves, are determined to do it their way, no matter how odd it may seem.

New GM Jeff Peterson (35) and new head coach Charles Lee (39) have swung big with Salaün. They could have taken a better-known player. They could have traded back and hedged their bets with some more assets in a, “Just in case this doesn’t work out” sort of situation.

Instead, Peterson has made it sound post-selection that Salaün might have been his very favorite player in the entire draft, and somebody they have quietly zeroed in on for months.

Like many people have over the centuries, Peterson went to Europe and fell in love in the springtime. But in this case Peterson fell in love with an idea — the idea that the 6-9, 218-pound Salaün was a diamond amid the baguettes. C’est magnifique!

And that’s not all Peterson and Lee — who only had his opening press conference as the Hornets coach Tuesday — have done in a busy week. They also drafted Colorado guard KJ Simpson in the second round, waived veteran guard Seth Curry (son of Hornets legend Dell), said goodbye to JT Thor and made it very clear they want forward Miles Bridges — an unrestricted free agent who led the team in total points last season — back on the roster.

“I’ve made it very clear to Miles that we want him to remain as a Hornet,” Peterson said.

Whether Bridges does come back or not — he will have options, and the Hornets already broke the bank once on LaMelo Ball’s max contract — will likely be determined very soon.

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