And one of those picks became Serge Ibaka, when then became dipo and sabonis and then became PG13….which became trade #7 on the list.

The Nash 7SOL Suns were held back by Sarver’s incredible cheapness.

Didn’t they trade away Luol Deng?

That wasn’t even the Suns worst trade. They traded a pre DPOY Dennis Johnson to the Celtics for a backup PF (Rick Robey) who was out of the league a couple years later. DJ went on to star in Boston & win a title.

Thank you for Ibaka

My man Kurt Thomas

The Clippers traded Baron Davis and an unprotected first to the Cavs solely to get off of Baron Davis’ contract. That unprotected first became Kyrie Irving

Phoenix Suns GM Steve Kerr dealing with rookie Sam Presti.

It should be #2. Any trade before ~1985 doesn’t count because everyone was on crack. The Nets traded unprotected picks in 2016-18 for a 35 and 37 year old. Fucking insanity

Yeah I feel like that one has gotten a bit lost to time because the Nets ultimately rebuilt another “super team” less than a decade later, but it effectively made the modern Celtics what they are and was legitimately horrible only a year after it went down

How the fuck was that not on this list, the Celtics got a ring out of this trade for dumping their old players.

Seeing Bleacher Report rank it 60th is wild. A modern franchise traded at least a decade of their future for a group of over-the-hill stars that won them a single playoff series. The future picks they traded became a 2nd team all-nba/finals mvp and a 4-straight 1st team all-nba (both guys doing this before age 29) and a championship. 60th is a crazy ranking.

Damn I was having such a nice day

I think this truly was a hindsight is ²⁰⁄₂₀ situation. There were some excitement for the Nets back then and Boston fans truly felt angry with the trade.  Of course several miserable seasons later it didn’t turn out that way for the Nets, but quite a few people thought BOSTON got ripped off.

The Nets trade was made so the owner could pump up the value of the team by putting some big names on it and then bank on it when moved to Brooklyn. It had nothing to do with building a competent winning basketball team. Sure it was bad, but not for the owner.

The most ironic part about it is that they made actual moves that got them legends, but ever since Kobe retired they’ve made middling moves every step of the way just to get bailed out by top end talent just ending up there.

*beneficiary. Benefactor means to give, beneficiary means to receive

I mean two of em were for draft picks that BECAME those players though….idk what correlation you’re drawing there

Like hornet Kobe trade. Any one of the teams above that hornets pick could’ve drafted Kobe lol why is that some conspiracy?

Similarly, the Jazz-magic Johnson one….part of that was the jazz signing Gail Goodrich, but the Jazz made that trade before the season where they finished the worst record which THEN became the #1 pick….

/u/BatmanNoPrep with the cringiest, douchiest comment of all-time I might add, would tell you that it’s not a coincidence at all.

That comment right there, is why Lakers fans will forever be the worst, worse than the Knicks/Sixers/Celtics combined, and why no neutral should ever root for them.

Seems ridiculous to even compare it to the Luka trade.

This entire article is ignoring contexts around the trades. If the team had no choice and was just trying to recoup value from someone who wasnt going to play for them, they dont deserve to be here. This list should be reserved for incomptency.

+Junior was good enough to get his # retired. Not bad get for a guy who was getting out.

People who talk about the Kareem trade being one of the worst all time bucks trades just don’t know ball. The Nowitzki trade and the Allen trades were worse because Kareem would have walked regardless

The Ray Allen trade was worse than that.

Wanted to go to a bigger city is kind of downplaying it. Kareem has an amazing autobiography called Giant Steps in which he talks about the loneliness and racism he experienced in Milwaukee (keep in mind this was back in the 60s/70s, not modern day Milwaukee).

He is from NYC and that’s where all his family/friends were. Going to UCLA, he even hated it at first. However, over time, he made very close friends, found his group, found Islam/his Muslim community, and built a life there. He found a second home in LA.

Then going to Milwaukee, he felt very alone and the cold weather forcing him to be indoors didn’t help. He was borderline depressed.

I highly recommend the book and don’t think saying “he wanted to go to a bigger city” depicts the reality.

Worse one is Ray Allen for Gary Payton

Yeah it’s not even remotely close to how bad the Luka trade is/was. Hell it’s not even nearly as bad as the PG trade imo

Wasn’t it the same w kobe and hornets? I thought he didn’t want to play for them?

Bucks hand was forced…

And yet Milwaukee did fantastically well in that trade.

In return for a player that they could not re-sign, and who had only one year remaining on his contract, they received;

• A blue-chip sophomore guard, who would go on to make multiple All-star games, and have his number retired in Milwaukee
• The #2 overall pick in that draft.
• The #8 overall pick in that draft.
• A 25 year-old blue-chip center, who they played for one season ( ¹⁵⁄₁₁ ) and then flipped for two additional first-round picks.

The #8 overall pick also wound up with his jersey in the rafters in Milwaukee, and the #2 pick probably would have, except he was abducted by a cult ( seriously ).

In other words, pay no attention to this garbage from Bleacher Report.

Most of this list is bad, a lot of these trades are only bad in hindsight. Which still counts but you can’t put these as top 10 worst trades

I think any trade where the player insisted on being traded shouldn’t count, especially if they tried to control where they went. Like the Bucks were never going to get fair value for Kareem, that doesn’t mean it was one of the worst trades ever.

Kobe didn’t refuse to play for Charlotte, he was never really picked by Charlotte. Charlotte traded their pick for Vlade and Jerry West told them who to pick on draft night.

If this happened today, Kobe would be drafted by the Lakers officially. Rather than just technically.

What you’re thinking of, is Kobe, his agent and Jerry West calling up other teams to tell them to not draft him + Kobe only working out for Lakers, Philly, Boston.

Yeah, can’t blame Charlotte for Kobe. Sucks for them.

I don’t think any of these draft night trades should count. Yeah, they look horrible in retrospect, but if folks knew Kobe was gonna be Kobe, or Dirk was gonna be Dirk, they woulda went #1 overall. It’s a completely different calculus when you know what you have and you still let them go.

To be fair it’s strange to include some others as well. Like the SGA trade may not have panned out, but it was instrumental in getting Kawhi and PG to the Clippers. Just because something doesn’t work out doesn’t mean it was at horrible trade. No one viewed SGA as soon to be MVP level player at the time.

damn if Jermaine went to the  hornets he would have had a whole new arc and probably went down in(better) history 

How many times does this need to be stated? It’s ridiculous at this point.

For me, the real trade that shouldn’t count on this list is Dr J to the 76ers. The NBA (and specifically the Knicks org at the time) basically forced the Nets to sell him for cash, as the condition of the Nets joining the NBA from the ABA was paying the Knicks a massive fee for sharing the greater NYC territory.

If they didn’t make that trade, they would have gone bankrupt.

Yeah, and also just because a trade turned out to be bad, it doesn’t mean it was bad at the time.
Using this logic every team is a moron, because they picked 40 other players before the Nuggets drafted Jokic…

My buddy used to do per diem NBA draft write ups for them.

We were in 10th grade. That’s who’s writing this stuff.

the city of Boston has earned the reputation, no doubt. the Boston Celtics themselves are one of the most racially progressive organizations in sports

they broke the NBA color barrier by drafting Chuck Cooper in 1950, they were the first team to start five black players in 1964, and they were the first major American professional sports team to hire a black head coach in 1966

I think people forget that Paul George was just coming off a 28/8/4 + 2 stl season with the Thunder where he finished 3rd in the MVP race.

Clippers one wasn’t bad at the time because nobody predicted the clippers would be that disappointing. They really looked like favorites for a while in 2020

Agreed. The Luka shit was egregious AT the time and may end up being worse in hindsight. For now though, we know the clips traded an MVP/finals MVP.

In hindsight the Hawks trading rights to Bill Russel, then having him win 11 titles, including 3 against the Hawks, is far worse than whatever could come out of the SGA trade.

Give me one good argument for how the SGA trade is worse than the Hawks trading the rights to Bill Russell and then losing to Bill Russell in the Finals THREE times in his first 5* seasons.

Because it wasn’t part of the trade package directly it’s never written down that this trade only happens when it includes Kawhi joining the Clippers directly after winning finals MVP

It was a lot but Kawhi was arguably the best player in the world at that point and PG was an All-NBA player. They traded a player who was viewed as potentially very good but not Finals MVP good and 5 first round picks to pair two All-NBA players but be honest how many first round picks turn into PG let alone Kawhi.

It’s definitely hindsight per the article. They mention picks turning into other players quite a bit here.

Agreed, some of these aren’t bad on paper just bad if you look years into the future.

Also, they had to do that trade to get Kawhi, which makes it look way better. All their picks, plus a promising young player (nobody had any idea he’d be this good) for PG (who had just come third in MVP) and Kawhi (who people were calling the best player in the league) was not insane at the time.

It’s hard to judge the trade in a vacuum though because it’s pretty clear they were effectively acquiring Kawhi through this trade too.

It was really all that stuff for PG and Kawhi, which if you put it that way its not too bad

To be fair to the Milwaukee Bucks - they knew they had a young stud SG in 2003, and after this trade he would break out and become an all-star the following season. That young stud SG was of course Michael Redd…

Most intelligent teams in the league knew that the Bucks’ two best players played the same position (the Mavs had signed Redd to an offer sheet in the 2002 offseason on that basis), and that they were looking to make a trade to try and contend, so if Milwaukee hadn’t have dealt Allen we’d probably be looking back and asking why they gave away Redd just before he broke out. Milwaukee btw were always in ‘win now’ mode under Herb Kohl’s ownership because it wasn’t felt the market was big enough to survive a full bottom out and rebuild, the Pacers operated in the same way as well.

The Payton/Mason package wasn’t great, not least because GP left at the end of the season for a Lakers superteam that the Bucks couldn’t have reasonably anticipated at the time of the trade. But there wasn’t really a better deal on the table, and with the overlap between Allen and Redd, some kind of deal probably needed to be made around that time.

Especially considering the Dr.J Trade only happened so the Nets Owners at the time could afford to join the NBA after the NBA/ABA Merger.

It’s not like the Babe Ruth trade when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for cash so they could put on a Broadway show.

Knicks ownership wanted a Tax on the Nets for moving into their Market so the Nets had to pay the Knicks whenever they moved even if it was to a new arena within the state of NJ.

That all went out the window in the early 2000’s when Dolan needed help and Nets ownership at the time negotiated for the “Tax” to be removed which then allowed the Nets to later move to Brooklyn.

Because they seem to think you only got Brown from it. You got Tatum AND Brown from that trade.

That’s a top 5 worst trade OAT at minimum

This article is dumb.

1. Jazz Trade Dominique Wilkins to Hawks (1982)

They acknowledge it here but Nique refused to play for the Jazz. There was absolutely nothing they could do. But the author is like “That at least partially lets the organization off the hook”. Partially? They literally had no other choice.

Yeah, they signed Gail Goodrich. They came last which gave them the first pick and they were forced to give it to the Lakers a struggling small market team lead by nobodies like Kareem Abdul Jabbar finishing equal 6th in the standings.

Yep. This article is total trash.

And even with the forced compensation, the Jazz sent away a first round pick 3 years in the future only to have injuries in 1978 turn that pick into a #1 pick. That’s not even remotely comparable to trading away an established generational talent.

I dont think Kobe/Divac was that bad. Divac was a pretty good, very solid player. 

People fail to appreciate the risk involved in that trade. It was entirely unprecedented to trade a young all-star caliber* center for an 18 year-old kid with an attitude problem, and an ego the size of a planet.

* Had not made one yet, but would later. And it was pretty tough to do so in a conference with Olajuwon and Robinson, two of the very best ever.

The harden trade seems way worse. Divac was at least a very good player for a while.

Okc got one season of Kevin Martin, Jeremy lamb, Adams, and Mitch mcgary.

It was so bad i had people that don’t watch asking me if it was real

Or players want to play there…

Kobe literally forced it, hence shouldn’t be on this list.

I remember laughing when the Celtics did that and acquired unknown players, it looked dumb at first but Ainge really knows when is the time to rebuild. He did it with the C’s Big 3 then the one with Isaiah Thomas.

I’m surprised it still exists. It looked like an abandoned site 5 years ago.

This should be higher.

There are a lot of dumb trades that are missing context in here. This one is the dumbest.

Kareem wanted out. They had to trade him. Luka did not.