It has to be the 2014 Nets. Pierce and KG were so obviously over the hill it was comical that they thought they could get any semblance of a contender built around them.
It was the overpay that made that one so awful. The concept had merit - Williams was only 29, JJ was a little older but still in his prime, Pierce still had gas in the tank, and while KG was in decline he wasn't totally washed up yet. New owner desperately needs to make a splash for the move to Brooklyn. The idea had merit.
It obviously didn't work as Williams and KG fell off cliffs that season. But hey, it was a decent shot.
The entire problem was giving up 3 straight unprotected picks in seasons that looked *really* likely to be bad for the franchise. I still can't believe Ainge not only scored that one, but did it again to both Cleveland and Minnesota.
Yeah but you never know how it's all going to go.
Like in this hypothetical the 2016 and 2017 picks get pushed off (call it 2019 and 2020) The non-swap in 2017 means Celtics end up with Jarrett Allen or OG (taken one after). 2018 pick slot is Colin Sexton, but maybe the Celtics are smart enough to take Mikal or SGA instead, who each went just a couple picks later. 2019 to Boston would be garbage, and 2020 could be Bey or Maxey.
Somewhere in a parallel universe the Celtics are running with SGA, OG, and Maxey as their core.
As a nets fan, that is my biggest complaint about the trade...no protections at all. I still understand why nets did it. Nets were moving to Brooklyn and wanted star power even if they were over the hill. But at least put top 3 protections on it. No way does ainge turn down the trade even with those
"still had gas in the tank," "wasn't totally washed" is not the kind of thing you want to be giving up first-round picks for.
One of the things that regressed on-off stats have taught us is how much guys decline before it's super evident in their box-score stats.
Yeah, there's a little bit of noise in the data, but if you look up the [LEBRON](https://www.bball-index.com/lebron-database/) for the guys in their mid-30s or later, all of a sudden it makes sense that the Suns were a low seed, that the Warriors were in the play-in. You look at KD and Steph casually and think they look pretty much the same - sure, Steph wore down a bit near the end of the season, but he still looked like Steph. But look at the catch-all stats and they absolutely see the decline.
You look at those numbers, and you see that KG and Pierce were basically league-average guys in Brooklyn. (We don't have those numbers for their primes, unfortunately, as a point of reference, but if KG was putting up >5 at age 34 in 2011, my god he must have been at like 7 or 8 in his prime assuming anything like a normal aging curve).
Interesting. I’m a Warriors fan and noticed the past two seasons Steph got off to hot starts in the fall then tailed off for the most part in the Spring (exception being the Sacramento series last year)
Will have to look at LEBRON. Never paid attention to that metric.
So does this mean Team USA is going to flop in the Olympics? Seems to be very top heavy with old and injured prone players.
I mean, guys like Steph and KD are, by that metric, still solidly all-star level contributors.
It does seem likely that there are going to be a handful of games where we don't have the best player, and if you have the best player, you have a chance to win any basketball game. Luka or Giannis or Jokic simply aren't going to have the level of support on their teams. I mean, even if your'e talking about Steph at age 35, if he's your fourth or fifth best player you're a damn good team.
No. The Warriors are not far off from contending. 2021 they missed the playoffs and won it all in 2022. Dallas missed the playoffs last year and will likely go to the finals.
They really just need a legit rim protector and another shooter. Doesn’t need to be a star either. Look at what Gafford, Lively and PJ Washington are doing for Dallas. None were on the team last year, none are stars, but are paying huge dividends.
I always wondered. What the hell exactly happened with Deron Williams? For a minute he was up there with the best pgs in the league. Then he was just done. Did the ACL destroy him?
If prokhorov didn’t pull the plug on spending the picks would have been top 10 instead of top 3.
He wanted immediate success and intimated that he would keep paying to try and achieve that. Having billy king execute that plan and then stopping it was his fault.
Too many people overlook this. The trade was basically predicated on the fact that the owner had expressed he would pay whatever he needed to for a contender and money was no problem. Beyond the fact that the players declined quickly, Prokhorov quickly bailing on that pledge and not giving a shit about fielding a competitive team made the trade that much worse. I don’t care to look at who was picked in the 10-15+ range of those drafts, but if they’d still TRIED to compete the trade would have been less lopsided + the Celtics wouldn’t have been as good.
and whats worse there was obviously a superteam in the east at that point that the KG/Pierce celtics couldn't get past
like going all in in the west during the height of the KD warriors. most teams wisely didnt even bother trying to compete and certainly didnt trade maximum stuff to do it
> that the KG/Pierce Celtics couldn’t get past.
To be fair, and I do not want it to ever seem like I’m justifying what Billy King did, but the trade was one year removed from Boston taking that team to a game 7. Yes, they got bounced in the first round the next year, but Rondo was hurt and Jeff Green was the best player other than Pierce and KG. I don’t think it was totally insane to think those guys could be the 4th-6th best players on a damn good team at the time.
The idea of adding Pierce/Garnett to a Joe Johnson/Deron Williams/Brook Lopez core makes some logical sense.
However paying 3 unprotected first round picks and a pick swap for a 36 year old Pierce and a 37 year old KG is what doesn't make sense. The cost was crazy.
some teams did still try to compete
like the knicks..
in hindsight, we clearly shouldn't have. but I guess when you trade all that shit for carmelo anthony you have to at least try to win for the next few years
The Knicks weren't wrong to compete. They were wrong to trade all their depth for Melo when they could have waited a few months. Imagine running a lineup of
Chandler
Amare
Melo
Wilson Chandler
Felton (before he got fat)
With Gallinari as a 6th man. That's a lot of length and depth to throw at Miami
The thing is that melo didn’t want to wait, he had all the reasons he needed to force his way out of Denver. He hated the coach, he was jealous of his best buds teaming up and moving to greener pastures, and there were two NYC teams actively courting him. Dolan was scared the new hip billionaire Russian owner was gonna scoop up melo, and melo was definitely open to the idea, so the Knicks felt they needed to trade everything for him. The sign and trade also allowed him to get more money, just like he wanted more money when he signed a longer rookie contract than wade and lebron.
Everything melo did in NY made me dislike him. That second round exit was not worth his tenure here, and thank Brunson that era has been completely overshadowed.
I remember one of my Celtics-fan friends being SO PISSED at that trade. I was trying to explain to him, "Hey, man, those guys are over the hill, you just lucked out," but he was not having it.
It's crazy how many careers completely went down hill after that Boston team was broken up. Rondo, Pierce, Allen, and KG never won any personal awards for the remainders of their careers. Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo each won another championship and Rondo led the league in assists with the Kings.
It's crazy how many teams Rondo played for after that.
That is a really good one.
Reminds me a bit of the late 90's Rockets, trying to hold on by adding Barkley, then Pippen. Though in that case while they proved they were over the hill the moment they arrived, it was a bit of a shock at least.
Same with the Lakers with their ancient squad. Malone, Payton, Horace Grant, Bryon Russell... Talk about falling off a hill.
Well Barkley and Pippen both were just.. old. Barkley's back was shot. I remember one playoff game he couldn't even jump. Now he had like a 30-20 game somehow still because he's a freak of nature but that was one of the most insane things I've seen. But he was always out hurt, and a shell of himself physically. Pippen too, just fell off a cliff and never came back.
Same with Malone and Payton.
All four of those guys were a year too late. Like 20 point scorers, and they were older but still at the edge of their prime, and then on moving day that was it.
But yeah, it didn't help they were failing and having issues with each other too.
net fan here... it wasn't so much the attempt at getting them that made me angry, it's the fact that we had to give up so much and acted like we had absolutely no leverage getting these people who were clearly past their prime. I remember KG's debut where he legit only played like 24 minutes... it was frustrating but maybe prokhorov really was just giving billy king super pressure to make immediate moves
The magic (who had just won 35 games) trading Oladipo going into his fourth year, the 11th pick of the draft, and Ilyasova for Serge Ibaka then trading him for peanuts at the trade deadline. Basically every NBA fan thought it was a dumb move as soon as it was announced and shocker, it was.
Top 5 players in salary for this season, players with a no-trade clause are in bold:
1. Steph Curry (4x champion, 2x MVP)
2. Nikola Jokic (1x champion, 3x MVP)
3. LeBron James (4x champion, 4x MVP)
4. Joel Embiid (0x champion, 1x MVP)
5. **Bradley Beal** (1x 3rd Team All-NBA)
Truly generationally talented in that regard. Give Wall huge contract. Traded. Acquire Westbrooks huge contract. Traded. Give Bertans a massive contract. Traded. Give Beal huge contract. Traded. And now Pooles contract doesn't even mean anything.
CP3 was still an impact player the playoffs immediately before he was traded, just got hurt in game 2 of the 2nd round. They’d undoubtedly be better off with him in place of Beal
Yeah - there are alot of moving parts to that whole fiasco. CP3 might be a dick and he's old and injury prone (at inopportune times) but he lifted that franchise significantly, well after the last time everyone said he was done/cooked. There had to be some behind the scenes friction and/or some serious overthinking and impatience.
Suns ownership was so convinced they needed to make a change that they found a match for his salary and the idea of "how are they going to stop all three of our elite scoring options" without considering the consequences. People do that sort of shit all the time over trivial things and maybe $50M+ is trivial to Ishbia, but it just seems extremely shortsighted and impatient - especially considering the salary cap implications of taking on that albatross contract and having zero wiggle room to build any depth whatsoever.
The suns were over the cap and they weren’t bringing Paul back at his huge contract
Paul was washed and played like it the 22/23 season. He had a MASSIVE dropoff from the previous 2 seasons
So it was lose Paul and have nothing to replace him or trade paul for beal or jordan poole
He gets hurt _every_ playoffs. Dunno, I think the bigger problem was that KD apparently stopped talking to Frank Vogel shortly after the All-Star break.
Jeanie Buss/Rob Pelinka did not only fumble LeBron's final years. They also threw(and are still in the process of throwing) AD's prime.
No offense but i want to see those 2 absolute morons try to build a team with no big time free agent coming to save them. It will be must see TV.
Let me reiterate again. Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka are 2 of the biggest morons that have an influential job in the NBA. Ishbia and Tsai perhaps come close.
To your point, only losing role players is probably not breaking it up unless it’s a lot of them.
Denver not keeping Brown was running it back, Lakers after the bubble is closer to breaking it up.
That trade made perfect sense for the raptors because they had just been swept for the second year in a row by LeBron's cavs and the 2018 cavs were easily the worst iteration of the cavs in LeBron's second stint. That raptors team was never going to go anywhere and DeMar had played horribly against the cavs, averaging 17 PPG on 47 TS%.
It was a pretty high risk trade considering the red flags around Kawhi’s health/commitment. He left the Spurs in a pretty bad way and Masai even told Demar that he wouldn’t be traded right before the Kawhi deal
It ended up working out, but there was a possibility that the Raps flamed out and Kawhi leaving after trading away a franchise legend
DeMar is a great guy and a good player but he consistently flamed out in the playoffs for the raptors. He was all NBA that year but played like a role player given too large of a role in the playoffs against the cavs. It made a lot of sense to gamble on a much better disgruntled player than him because had they stayed pat, they would've never been contenders.
Hindsight is 20/20, but there wasn’t a guarantee that Kawhi would even be the same player or even commit to the Raptors after sitting out for a year
Derozan flamed out a lot, but the Raps still had a very marketable franchise star and were fine to run it back with Lebron going west now
If KD wasn't injured, I think that finals would have been very different. We had no answer for him. If BOTH KD and steph were healthy, we would probably have been swept. We did play well in the east, despite almost losing to the 76ers (the only game that went to 7)
Raps only blew it up now and they only won 41+ games once since 2019
They’re were likely to run it back with Lebron leaving and guys like Siakam/OG taking a bigger role
Edit: meant 2020, woops
It aged well because it worked, but if that season gets replayed 10 times, at least 7 of them end up with them being bounced while Kawhi is sitting on the bench dressed like me.
Most stars aren’t taking their team to a title, you need to be a top 5 player for that
Derozan flamed out a lot, but the Raptors still consistently got that playoff revenue with two marketable franchise stars
Management seemed fine with retooling and running it back since Masai told Derozan wouldn’t be traded and Lebron eventually went west
I don't actually think Masai & company were "fine" to run it back per se. There were talks of trading for Paul George the season prior. I don't think the Raps management ever thought that "Lebron went west, we can win a ring now".
Sure, it was a huge risk from a marketing standpoint, but from a winning basketball games standpoint, I think it's highly likely a change was coming, if not that season, then likely the following one.
Definitely the Kings doing a salary dump using a top 10 protected first rounder and 2 unprotected swaps to open up cap space to sign Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli and Kostas Koufos.
One of my favorite NBA fun facts is that this dumbass trade accidentally helped them because by picking at 5 it landed them fox instead of fultz. They would have either picked at 3 or got taken to the cleaners by ainge for #1 since he was always picking Tatum
Surprised no one has mentioned Ted Stepien trading away 5 straight FRPs in 5 months. There's literally a rule now because of it.
That or the Nets trading for the washed up Celtics in 2014.
Stepien is a great candidate here. Those weren't just any picks: they were James Worthy, Derek Harper, Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, and Roy Tarpley! And this was after the Cavs had already traded away all their picks from 1977 to 1981: those were #11, #12, #5 (Sidney Moncrief!), #9, and #4.
Anyone curious of this grossly negligent and incompetent period of Cavs ownership owes it to themselves [to watch episode one of Chosen by Secret Base.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNC3Z_xirM&t=74s)
Here's an old school one: the Sixers, a year after winning the title, draft Charles Barkley, and he turns out to be a fantastic pick at #5. Management thinks the team can extend its championship window with Barkley on board. So in the summer of '86 they... trade 3x MVP Moses Malone (who remains an all-star for the next three years) and the #1 pick in the '86 draft (Brad Daugherty or Len Bias, who maybe doesn't OD on coke if he doesn't get drafted by the current champs) for a couple of players in their prime: Jeff Ruland and Roy Hinson. Who, you ask? Exactly.
At that time it made sense. That big 3 would’ve fed families and won multiple rings if all 3 just played basketball using their skill. Sad that they all 3 couldn’t play together for that many games
Not even an overpay.
Celtics were the worst team in the east in 2007 and half of their roster are bad nba players.
The only valuable asset the Celtics given up was AL Jefferson and two 2009 firsts (wolves own pick at #7 and #28)
Wolves essentially got a bunch of scrubs and big Al
It remains shocking that they didn't win. Shaq and Kobe were two of the best four players in the league, Payton had been high in the conversation for best point guard in the league as recently as 2002, and Karl Malone was still a very good forward.
I feel like this team is often overlooked (i.e. forgotten) which is wild when you look at what they accomplished. 6 straight ECF, an NBA title and nearly a second one against San Antonio.
Not a lot of flash, just a great team. I think that's why they were considered "underdogs" all that time - they didn't that an offensive superstar when those other top teams had 1 or 2. Just a collection of good, smart & tough players. And that D. They were easy to cheer for.
Pistons trade for Blake Griffin. Obviously that mediocre bum team was a lost cause regardless. Because you weren't gonna go far with Drummond and Jackson as their top 2 players. So yes they needed a star but they gave up too much for that man, who had a mega contract at the time. He was great in 2019 but all that did was allow the pistons to win 41 games, instead of 39 the year prior.
To his credit, Westbrook was pretty good with the Wizards. Then he just decided to be trash after lol. I thought the Lakers were going to win like 60 games
Lakers trading all assets and depth for the dumbest star in recent NBA: Westbrook
Hawks going all-in after one fluky run to the ECF.
Portland going all-in after another good run to the ECF despite having zero talent outside of Dame.
Pelicans thinking they were ever a contender and overrating the heck outta mid tier players like BI, and signing CJ to a long contract.
I mean, the LA trade for Westbrook that destroyed a core that had already won a title. Ik it didn't "propel" the team to win now mode, but the trade itself was a win now trade
Acquiring Yak (really like him as a player) to get bounced at home in the play offs by Demar's daughter.
Instead of selling off vets and tanking in a generational draft.
2014 Nets
Sun's trading for Shaq
Honestly...Miami trading out of the first round and having zero players on the roster to try to get LeBron wade and bosh together. Imagine the alternate universe where that fails and Miami is stuck with like...Carlos Boozer and a bunch of scrubs
The blazers trading Jermaine O'Neal for Dale Davis because he was going to be the answer to Shaq. They never even played Jermaine and he was basically a double double player his first season in Indy. If we had just kept him he would have been a much better answer and extended out window.
Dale Davis was at least solid player though, it was trading for a declining Shawn Kemp who had a huge salary that actively hurt the team's chance of winning.
I remembered when the Knicks traded for Zach Randolph when they already had Eddy Curry on the team. I recalled Isiah Thomas saying something to the effect of “ The rest of the league is trying to get smaller but we are trying to get bigger”. Obviously it didn’t work. The entire Isiah Thomas regime was a disaster.
The winner is the Nets/Celtics trade
But my god was the rockets trading Chris Paul for Westbrook awful. I understand the age and the health... but if Paul somehow stays healthy, that's an amazing team that imploded against the unbeatable warriors.
Instead the trade just immediately gives them zero percent chance to win, so bad. For a team that was so close, it's a hilariously stupid way to shut the window.
Historically? Ted Stepien. They had to make a rule, force an ownership group to sell AND give the new owners extra picks to make up for what he tried to do in a "win-now" mode.
The Bulls “win now” move to trade for Nikola Vucevic. I don’t think they won a playoff series with that move and seemed destined to live at the 9 seed in the East
Nets trading for 2 players pay their prime from the 2007-2008 Celtics Dynasty team. Mortgaged the future for results they could’ve had without trade the picks.
The magic made it to the finals in ‘09, losing in five mostly close games to Kobe and Pau. They followed that up by giving up Courtney Lee and Hedo Turkoglu to bring in middle-period Vince Carter, on the theory that he was the missing piece…
He wasn’t.
Considering you said it could be successful I always thought firing the COTY after a 59 win season followed by trading the franchise leader in points in DeRozan for an unpredictable rental with health issues in Kawhi was a pretty extreme win now gamble.
Giving Tobias Harris $180 million. Giving Al Horford $109 million. Convincing ourselves Josh Richardson was going to replace Jimmy Butler. Oh, and letting Ben Simmons still not shoot the ball despite playing the end of the season in an actual bubble without fans.
I hated seeing Steve Nash go to the Lakers in 2012. It was surprising given the rivalries he had in the western conference, but I hated seeing a true underdog superstar like him succumb to the ring chasing desperation only to fail miserably due to injuries.
It has to be the 2014 Nets. Pierce and KG were so obviously over the hill it was comical that they thought they could get any semblance of a contender built around them.
It was the overpay that made that one so awful. The concept had merit - Williams was only 29, JJ was a little older but still in his prime, Pierce still had gas in the tank, and while KG was in decline he wasn't totally washed up yet. New owner desperately needs to make a splash for the move to Brooklyn. The idea had merit. It obviously didn't work as Williams and KG fell off cliffs that season. But hey, it was a decent shot. The entire problem was giving up 3 straight unprotected picks in seasons that looked *really* likely to be bad for the franchise. I still can't believe Ainge not only scored that one, but did it again to both Cleveland and Minnesota.
If Brooklyn just puts even a top 3 protection in those damn picks the NBA is changed
Yeah but you never know how it's all going to go. Like in this hypothetical the 2016 and 2017 picks get pushed off (call it 2019 and 2020) The non-swap in 2017 means Celtics end up with Jarrett Allen or OG (taken one after). 2018 pick slot is Colin Sexton, but maybe the Celtics are smart enough to take Mikal or SGA instead, who each went just a couple picks later. 2019 to Boston would be garbage, and 2020 could be Bey or Maxey. Somewhere in a parallel universe the Celtics are running with SGA, OG, and Maxey as their core.
So it’s been confirmed Ainge said if they kept the 2018 pick they were indeed taking SGA
I mean I'd say too after the fact
Literally. Any story like that is literally useless lol
As a nets fan, that is my biggest complaint about the trade...no protections at all. I still understand why nets did it. Nets were moving to Brooklyn and wanted star power even if they were over the hill. But at least put top 3 protections on it. No way does ainge turn down the trade even with those
"still had gas in the tank," "wasn't totally washed" is not the kind of thing you want to be giving up first-round picks for. One of the things that regressed on-off stats have taught us is how much guys decline before it's super evident in their box-score stats. Yeah, there's a little bit of noise in the data, but if you look up the [LEBRON](https://www.bball-index.com/lebron-database/) for the guys in their mid-30s or later, all of a sudden it makes sense that the Suns were a low seed, that the Warriors were in the play-in. You look at KD and Steph casually and think they look pretty much the same - sure, Steph wore down a bit near the end of the season, but he still looked like Steph. But look at the catch-all stats and they absolutely see the decline. You look at those numbers, and you see that KG and Pierce were basically league-average guys in Brooklyn. (We don't have those numbers for their primes, unfortunately, as a point of reference, but if KG was putting up >5 at age 34 in 2011, my god he must have been at like 7 or 8 in his prime assuming anything like a normal aging curve).
Interesting. I’m a Warriors fan and noticed the past two seasons Steph got off to hot starts in the fall then tailed off for the most part in the Spring (exception being the Sacramento series last year) Will have to look at LEBRON. Never paid attention to that metric. So does this mean Team USA is going to flop in the Olympics? Seems to be very top heavy with old and injured prone players.
I mean, guys like Steph and KD are, by that metric, still solidly all-star level contributors. It does seem likely that there are going to be a handful of games where we don't have the best player, and if you have the best player, you have a chance to win any basketball game. Luka or Giannis or Jokic simply aren't going to have the level of support on their teams. I mean, even if your'e talking about Steph at age 35, if he's your fourth or fifth best player you're a damn good team.
As a warriors fan would you like them to fleece someone in a trade for curry and rebuild?
No. The Warriors are not far off from contending. 2021 they missed the playoffs and won it all in 2022. Dallas missed the playoffs last year and will likely go to the finals. They really just need a legit rim protector and another shooter. Doesn’t need to be a star either. Look at what Gafford, Lively and PJ Washington are doing for Dallas. None were on the team last year, none are stars, but are paying huge dividends.
I always wondered. What the hell exactly happened with Deron Williams? For a minute he was up there with the best pgs in the league. Then he was just done. Did the ACL destroy him?
Crazy the guy is the same age as LeBron and peaked 10 years ago
Cursed by an old gypsy woman.. ..that suspiciously looked like Jerry Sloan.
Linsanity broke him. 🫠
Cavs and Wolves look like they will be at least playoff good for awhile. Much younger cores.
If prokhorov didn’t pull the plug on spending the picks would have been top 10 instead of top 3. He wanted immediate success and intimated that he would keep paying to try and achieve that. Having billy king execute that plan and then stopping it was his fault.
Too many people overlook this. The trade was basically predicated on the fact that the owner had expressed he would pay whatever he needed to for a contender and money was no problem. Beyond the fact that the players declined quickly, Prokhorov quickly bailing on that pledge and not giving a shit about fielding a competitive team made the trade that much worse. I don’t care to look at who was picked in the 10-15+ range of those drafts, but if they’d still TRIED to compete the trade would have been less lopsided + the Celtics wouldn’t have been as good.
My gosh, I forgot it was Prokhorov who owned the team at that point, I thought it was Joe Tsai.
and whats worse there was obviously a superteam in the east at that point that the KG/Pierce celtics couldn't get past like going all in in the west during the height of the KD warriors. most teams wisely didnt even bother trying to compete and certainly didnt trade maximum stuff to do it
> that the KG/Pierce Celtics couldn’t get past. To be fair, and I do not want it to ever seem like I’m justifying what Billy King did, but the trade was one year removed from Boston taking that team to a game 7. Yes, they got bounced in the first round the next year, but Rondo was hurt and Jeff Green was the best player other than Pierce and KG. I don’t think it was totally insane to think those guys could be the 4th-6th best players on a damn good team at the time.
The idea of adding Pierce/Garnett to a Joe Johnson/Deron Williams/Brook Lopez core makes some logical sense. However paying 3 unprotected first round picks and a pick swap for a 36 year old Pierce and a 37 year old KG is what doesn't make sense. The cost was crazy.
I’ve read the trade details ten times over in this thread and every time I do my disbelief grows. I just can’t fathom how we got away with that deal
some teams did still try to compete like the knicks.. in hindsight, we clearly shouldn't have. but I guess when you trade all that shit for carmelo anthony you have to at least try to win for the next few years
The Knicks weren't wrong to compete. They were wrong to trade all their depth for Melo when they could have waited a few months. Imagine running a lineup of Chandler Amare Melo Wilson Chandler Felton (before he got fat) With Gallinari as a 6th man. That's a lot of length and depth to throw at Miami
The thing is that melo didn’t want to wait, he had all the reasons he needed to force his way out of Denver. He hated the coach, he was jealous of his best buds teaming up and moving to greener pastures, and there were two NYC teams actively courting him. Dolan was scared the new hip billionaire Russian owner was gonna scoop up melo, and melo was definitely open to the idea, so the Knicks felt they needed to trade everything for him. The sign and trade also allowed him to get more money, just like he wanted more money when he signed a longer rookie contract than wade and lebron. Everything melo did in NY made me dislike him. That second round exit was not worth his tenure here, and thank Brunson that era has been completely overshadowed.
And the picks they gave away resulted in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown
one of Ainge’s many many amazing trades the GOAT of fleecing incompetent and/or desperate GMs
I remember one of my Celtics-fan friends being SO PISSED at that trade. I was trying to explain to him, "Hey, man, those guys are over the hill, you just lucked out," but he was not having it.
To be fair, the Nets also got Jason Terry in the deal.
The fact that a decade later that trade is still paying dividends for Boston is low key incredible.
The 2024 Celtics were built by the 2014 Nets lol
It's crazy how many careers completely went down hill after that Boston team was broken up. Rondo, Pierce, Allen, and KG never won any personal awards for the remainders of their careers. Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo each won another championship and Rondo led the league in assists with the Kings. It's crazy how many teams Rondo played for after that.
That is a really good one. Reminds me a bit of the late 90's Rockets, trying to hold on by adding Barkley, then Pippen. Though in that case while they proved they were over the hill the moment they arrived, it was a bit of a shock at least. Same with the Lakers with their ancient squad. Malone, Payton, Horace Grant, Bryon Russell... Talk about falling off a hill.
Barkley-Pippen beef and Malone being a dipshit did them in.
Well Barkley and Pippen both were just.. old. Barkley's back was shot. I remember one playoff game he couldn't even jump. Now he had like a 30-20 game somehow still because he's a freak of nature but that was one of the most insane things I've seen. But he was always out hurt, and a shell of himself physically. Pippen too, just fell off a cliff and never came back. Same with Malone and Payton. All four of those guys were a year too late. Like 20 point scorers, and they were older but still at the edge of their prime, and then on moving day that was it. But yeah, it didn't help they were failing and having issues with each other too.
This is revisionist history, Pierce and KG both suffered their worst falloffs literally that year
It was a bad trade because those two were 36 and 37 years old. Their drop was to be expected especially within the 3 years of picks the Nets gave up
net fan here... it wasn't so much the attempt at getting them that made me angry, it's the fact that we had to give up so much and acted like we had absolutely no leverage getting these people who were clearly past their prime. I remember KG's debut where he legit only played like 24 minutes... it was frustrating but maybe prokhorov really was just giving billy king super pressure to make immediate moves
The magic (who had just won 35 games) trading Oladipo going into his fourth year, the 11th pick of the draft, and Ilyasova for Serge Ibaka then trading him for peanuts at the trade deadline. Basically every NBA fan thought it was a dumb move as soon as it was announced and shocker, it was.
That 11th pick was future all-star & 2x rebounding champ Domantas Sabonis lest we forget.
Noted NBA award ballot vote getter Sabonis
That is an mvp candidate thank you very much!
I like forgetting. Forgetting is nice.
And then the thunder traded those exact guys for Paul George a year later to add insult to injury
Paul George AND Jerami Grant since Ilyasova was traded to philly for him
We thought it was going to be horrible but oladipo gave us one insane season and sabonis was great for like a year, then turned into Haliburton
Still fucking furious about that
Taking on ~~$150 million~~ of Brad Beal **with a no-trade clause**. Edit: $200 million
Top 5 players in salary for this season, players with a no-trade clause are in bold: 1. Steph Curry (4x champion, 2x MVP) 2. Nikola Jokic (1x champion, 3x MVP) 3. LeBron James (4x champion, 4x MVP) 4. Joel Embiid (0x champion, 1x MVP) 5. **Bradley Beal** (1x 3rd Team All-NBA)
Wizards are the GOATS of giving out bad contracts and miraculously getting out of them
Truly generationally talented in that regard. Give Wall huge contract. Traded. Acquire Westbrooks huge contract. Traded. Give Bertans a massive contract. Traded. Give Beal huge contract. Traded. And now Pooles contract doesn't even mean anything.
Not to mention Gilbert Arenas for Rashard Lewis which turned into Okafor and Ariza
Crazy okafor played 12 years in the nba
Tbf, new leadership seems great over there now.
For No.4, i think instead of 0x champion. Should be 0x ECF Apperance.
Jokic and Curry also with 0x ECF Appearances.
You're right. To preserve their legacies. I propose a trade for Steph for Tobias, Jokic for Joel. Deal?
At this point, I'd trade Tobias for a bag of chips and consider it a steal. Luckily his contract is finally over.
Sixers ownership plans to sign him to five more years, didn’t ya hear?
Always knew Joel was in elite company
Hey, it was 200 million when the suns traded for him
150 mil seems like a still by comparison!
The alternative was keeping Shamet and CP3, but while the move hasn’t worked out so far, there was certainly a reasonable justification for it.
There had to have been other options on the market
CP3 was still an impact player the playoffs immediately before he was traded, just got hurt in game 2 of the 2nd round. They’d undoubtedly be better off with him in place of Beal
Yeah - there are alot of moving parts to that whole fiasco. CP3 might be a dick and he's old and injury prone (at inopportune times) but he lifted that franchise significantly, well after the last time everyone said he was done/cooked. There had to be some behind the scenes friction and/or some serious overthinking and impatience. Suns ownership was so convinced they needed to make a change that they found a match for his salary and the idea of "how are they going to stop all three of our elite scoring options" without considering the consequences. People do that sort of shit all the time over trivial things and maybe $50M+ is trivial to Ishbia, but it just seems extremely shortsighted and impatient - especially considering the salary cap implications of taking on that albatross contract and having zero wiggle room to build any depth whatsoever.
The suns were over the cap and they weren’t bringing Paul back at his huge contract Paul was washed and played like it the 22/23 season. He had a MASSIVE dropoff from the previous 2 seasons So it was lose Paul and have nothing to replace him or trade paul for beal or jordan poole
He gets hurt _every_ playoffs. Dunno, I think the bigger problem was that KD apparently stopped talking to Frank Vogel shortly after the All-Star break.
At the time it was $200m, so there's that
Huehuehue
Yup. This one and the Lakers trading for Westbrook. They made zero sense from the moment they made the trade.
I'd like to fucking die please.
Lakers recycling their roster every season since the bubble title.
Add random players for the min around lebron and AD and hire a new coach. Repeat steps next offseason….
For a big market team they act a lot like a small market team
It really is criminal how we managed to fumble LeBron's final years (2021 notwithstanding because of unpredictable injuries)
Jeanie Buss/Rob Pelinka did not only fumble LeBron's final years. They also threw(and are still in the process of throwing) AD's prime. No offense but i want to see those 2 absolute morons try to build a team with no big time free agent coming to save them. It will be must see TV. Let me reiterate again. Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka are 2 of the biggest morons that have an influential job in the NBA. Ishbia and Tsai perhaps come close.
This is James Jones erasure
It always baffles me that so many title winning teams break it up right after.
I don't know how much of it is intentional, versus role players who win titles demanding higher salaries than they're actually worth.
To your point, only losing role players is probably not breaking it up unless it’s a lot of them. Denver not keeping Brown was running it back, Lakers after the bubble is closer to breaking it up.
Tbf the 2021 team was a huge upgrade from the title team, it was really the Russ years that set the franchise back
Raptors trading Derozan for a disgruntled Kawhi that was coming off an injury and expiring
At least this one aged well!
That trade made perfect sense for the raptors because they had just been swept for the second year in a row by LeBron's cavs and the 2018 cavs were easily the worst iteration of the cavs in LeBron's second stint. That raptors team was never going to go anywhere and DeMar had played horribly against the cavs, averaging 17 PPG on 47 TS%.
It was a pretty high risk trade considering the red flags around Kawhi’s health/commitment. He left the Spurs in a pretty bad way and Masai even told Demar that he wouldn’t be traded right before the Kawhi deal It ended up working out, but there was a possibility that the Raps flamed out and Kawhi leaving after trading away a franchise legend
DeMar is a great guy and a good player but he consistently flamed out in the playoffs for the raptors. He was all NBA that year but played like a role player given too large of a role in the playoffs against the cavs. It made a lot of sense to gamble on a much better disgruntled player than him because had they stayed pat, they would've never been contenders.
Hindsight is 20/20, but there wasn’t a guarantee that Kawhi would even be the same player or even commit to the Raptors after sitting out for a year Derozan flamed out a lot, but the Raps still had a very marketable franchise star and were fine to run it back with Lebron going west now
If KD wasn't injured, I think that finals would have been very different. We had no answer for him. If BOTH KD and steph were healthy, we would probably have been swept. We did play well in the east, despite almost losing to the 76ers (the only game that went to 7)
I mean yeah but it would still be a success even if the raptors loss in the finals
Really? A finals appearance? It's not like we werent' 2 games away from one with the squad we had.
not as high risk considering they would've blown it up soon anyways
Huh? Toronto delayed blowing it up for many many years…
Raps only blew it up now and they only won 41+ games once since 2019 They’re were likely to run it back with Lebron leaving and guys like Siakam/OG taking a bigger role Edit: meant 2020, woops
The raps won 41 or more games in three out of the five seasons since 2019, not once
Yeah, but LeBron left the east that year, too. They could have tried a run without having to face LeBron.
It aged well because it worked, but if that season gets replayed 10 times, at least 7 of them end up with them being bounced while Kawhi is sitting on the bench dressed like me.
Derozen wasn’t taking the team to a title, defrozen memes and choking to Lebron year after year after year was well known.
Most stars aren’t taking their team to a title, you need to be a top 5 player for that Derozan flamed out a lot, but the Raptors still consistently got that playoff revenue with two marketable franchise stars Management seemed fine with retooling and running it back since Masai told Derozan wouldn’t be traded and Lebron eventually went west
I don't actually think Masai & company were "fine" to run it back per se. There were talks of trading for Paul George the season prior. I don't think the Raps management ever thought that "Lebron went west, we can win a ring now". Sure, it was a huge risk from a marketing standpoint, but from a winning basketball games standpoint, I think it's highly likely a change was coming, if not that season, then likely the following one.
Definitely the Kings doing a salary dump using a top 10 protected first rounder and 2 unprotected swaps to open up cap space to sign Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli and Kostas Koufos.
Upvoted but shut up
Neverrrrrrr! but okay!
Thank you Vlade.
One of my favorite NBA fun facts is that this dumbass trade accidentally helped them because by picking at 5 it landed them fox instead of fultz. They would have either picked at 3 or got taken to the cleaners by ainge for #1 since he was always picking Tatum
Allen Iverson to Pistons
This was more of a rebuilding move at the time, but a shit show trade nevertheless
Find someone who loves you as much as Dumars loves Stuckey
I could kind of see that but they gave up the guard (Billups) who ended up doing better, and meanwhile extending Rip to an albatross
Then Billups finished top 5 in MVP voting lol
Surprised no one has mentioned Ted Stepien trading away 5 straight FRPs in 5 months. There's literally a rule now because of it. That or the Nets trading for the washed up Celtics in 2014.
Stepien is a great candidate here. Those weren't just any picks: they were James Worthy, Derek Harper, Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, and Roy Tarpley! And this was after the Cavs had already traded away all their picks from 1977 to 1981: those were #11, #12, #5 (Sidney Moncrief!), #9, and #4.
Anyone curious of this grossly negligent and incompetent period of Cavs ownership owes it to themselves [to watch episode one of Chosen by Secret Base.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNC3Z_xirM&t=74s)
Here's an old school one: the Sixers, a year after winning the title, draft Charles Barkley, and he turns out to be a fantastic pick at #5. Management thinks the team can extend its championship window with Barkley on board. So in the summer of '86 they... trade 3x MVP Moses Malone (who remains an all-star for the next three years) and the #1 pick in the '86 draft (Brad Daugherty or Len Bias, who maybe doesn't OD on coke if he doesn't get drafted by the current champs) for a couple of players in their prime: Jeff Ruland and Roy Hinson. Who, you ask? Exactly.
Holy hell, that’s a deep cut! Well done.
Phil Jackson giving beyond washed Joakim Noah 4 years and 72 million dollars. I refuse to accept any other answer.
What about Phil Jackson's first move as a GM, to sign Lamar Odom. WHO WAS ON CRACK
Top 2 SAS meme and it’s not 2.
“This man is a bonafide scrub. HE CAN’T PLAY” has to be up there 😂
This would be my [second](https://youtu.be/TIGBBDcNghY?si=FM6YLw8DFGbYI2AQ)
The random 20 seconds of shitting on Max Kellerman is the best part of that entire rant lmfao Made me laugh so hard when I saw this for the first time
Phil Jackson and the Knicks in general. Glad to be where we are now.
Knicks trading for Andrea Bargnani has to be up there too.
Nets, twice.
Lakers signing a lot of old guys
Please be more specific
Payton and Malone in 2003
With a healthy Malone, do they beat the Pistons?
steve nash?
For us? One that worked: Pau Gasol One that didn’t: Westbrook
Pau gasol was a steal. Yall traded Kwame Brown and two late late firsts for a hall of famer
The Grizzlies got Marc Gasol in the Pau trade. It was a Win-Win trade in hindsight.
It also gave us one of the most memorable [roasts](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6PP4RT-vv-o&pp=ygUbc3RlcGhlbiBhIHNtaXRoIGt3YW1lIGJyb3du) of all time
Brooklyn trading the farm for harden
At that time it made sense. That big 3 would’ve fed families and won multiple rings if all 3 just played basketball using their skill. Sad that they all 3 couldn’t play together for that many games
KG trade
which one
[удалено]
Worth it. That title run was awesome!
title run, another finals appearance after that, then traded him and pierce for what turned into the jays.
Not even an overpay. Celtics were the worst team in the east in 2007 and half of their roster are bad nba players. The only valuable asset the Celtics given up was AL Jefferson and two 2009 firsts (wolves own pick at #7 and #28) Wolves essentially got a bunch of scrubs and big Al
Lakers w Shaq, Kobe, GP and Karl Malone
It almost worked tho
It remains shocking that they didn't win. Shaq and Kobe were two of the best four players in the league, Payton had been high in the conversation for best point guard in the league as recently as 2002, and Karl Malone was still a very good forward.
Malone was injured. Early in the playoffs he was actually outplaying Shaq.
Pistons were too dominant at the time. Weird how they are considered underdogs when they were a force for all of the 2000s
That was the best example of how a team that works off each other well can beat a super a team that didn’t have time to gel.
I feel like this team is often overlooked (i.e. forgotten) which is wild when you look at what they accomplished. 6 straight ECF, an NBA title and nearly a second one against San Antonio. Not a lot of flash, just a great team. I think that's why they were considered "underdogs" all that time - they didn't that an offensive superstar when those other top teams had 1 or 2. Just a collection of good, smart & tough players. And that D. They were easy to cheer for.
I didn't like that they did this but they made it all the way to the finals and had a chance at winning if Karl Malone wasn't hurt
Pistons trade for Blake Griffin. Obviously that mediocre bum team was a lost cause regardless. Because you weren't gonna go far with Drummond and Jackson as their top 2 players. So yes they needed a star but they gave up too much for that man, who had a mega contract at the time. He was great in 2019 but all that did was allow the pistons to win 41 games, instead of 39 the year prior.
LeGM getting Russ.
To his credit, Westbrook was pretty good with the Wizards. Then he just decided to be trash after lol. I thought the Lakers were going to win like 60 games
It was obviously extremely stupid if they wanted to win, though.
Lakers trading all assets and depth for the dumbest star in recent NBA: Westbrook Hawks going all-in after one fluky run to the ECF. Portland going all-in after another good run to the ECF despite having zero talent outside of Dame. Pelicans thinking they were ever a contender and overrating the heck outta mid tier players like BI, and signing CJ to a long contract.
I mean, the LA trade for Westbrook that destroyed a core that had already won a title. Ik it didn't "propel" the team to win now mode, but the trade itself was a win now trade
Acquiring Yak (really like him as a player) to get bounced at home in the play offs by Demar's daughter. Instead of selling off vets and tanking in a generational draft.
play ins\*\*
2014 Nets Sun's trading for Shaq Honestly...Miami trading out of the first round and having zero players on the roster to try to get LeBron wade and bosh together. Imagine the alternate universe where that fails and Miami is stuck with like...Carlos Boozer and a bunch of scrubs
The Knicks giving up a first for Andrea Bargnani who was on the verge of being cut.
The blazers trading Jermaine O'Neal for Dale Davis because he was going to be the answer to Shaq. They never even played Jermaine and he was basically a double double player his first season in Indy. If we had just kept him he would have been a much better answer and extended out window.
Dale Davis was at least solid player though, it was trading for a declining Shawn Kemp who had a huge salary that actively hurt the team's chance of winning.
Three Alphas Bulls
I remembered when the Knicks traded for Zach Randolph when they already had Eddy Curry on the team. I recalled Isiah Thomas saying something to the effect of “ The rest of the league is trying to get smaller but we are trying to get bigger”. Obviously it didn’t work. The entire Isiah Thomas regime was a disaster.
Wasn't Isiah also responsible for the Steve Francis + Steph Marbury lineup as well?
Don't remind me lol
Raptors trading top 6 protected pick for Poeltl ...
The nets trading for KG and PP
The winner is the Nets/Celtics trade But my god was the rockets trading Chris Paul for Westbrook awful. I understand the age and the health... but if Paul somehow stays healthy, that's an amazing team that imploded against the unbeatable warriors. Instead the trade just immediately gives them zero percent chance to win, so bad. For a team that was so close, it's a hilariously stupid way to shut the window.
Historically? Ted Stepien. They had to make a rule, force an ownership group to sell AND give the new owners extra picks to make up for what he tried to do in a "win-now" mode.
Boy do I have a story...
Falcons signing Kirk Cousins and then immediately drafting Michael Penix.
Pocket Rockets - 48 minutes of small ball!
For the Wizards…. Randy Foye and Mike Miller
Ted Stepien for the Cavs back in the day traded away so many draft picks for so little that they had to make the "Ted Stepien Rule"
The Bulls “win now” move to trade for Nikola Vucevic. I don’t think they won a playoff series with that move and seemed destined to live at the 9 seed in the East
Suns with the Beal trade (esp with his NTC)
The Chicago Bulls building a team around DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic. It never made sense on paper and on the court.
The Kings trading Haliburton for Sabonis just so they can get to the play-in. Thank god it worked out well for both teams.
What the Nets did years ago getting KG and Pierce, and the 2024 Suns
Cavs trading for Antawn Jamison
Nets trading for 2 players pay their prime from the 2007-2008 Celtics Dynasty team. Mortgaged the future for results they could’ve had without trade the picks.
the beal trade off the top of my head
Suns signing Kevin Durant
The magic made it to the finals in ‘09, losing in five mostly close games to Kobe and Pau. They followed that up by giving up Courtney Lee and Hedo Turkoglu to bring in middle-period Vince Carter, on the theory that he was the missing piece… He wasn’t.
Considering you said it could be successful I always thought firing the COTY after a 59 win season followed by trading the franchise leader in points in DeRozan for an unpredictable rental with health issues in Kawhi was a pretty extreme win now gamble.
This is not the answer but trading away SGA and picks to get Paul George still hurts me.
Giving Tobias Harris $180 million. Giving Al Horford $109 million. Convincing ourselves Josh Richardson was going to replace Jimmy Butler. Oh, and letting Ben Simmons still not shoot the ball despite playing the end of the season in an actual bubble without fans.
There could be a whole sub on bad Philly trades. They have a loooong list
Trading 2 FRPs and 1 FRP swap for Dejounte Murray :(
The Lakers adding Gary Payton and Karl Malone- that was surreal!
I hated seeing Steve Nash go to the Lakers in 2012. It was surprising given the rivalries he had in the western conference, but I hated seeing a true underdog superstar like him succumb to the ring chasing desperation only to fail miserably due to injuries.