20 best NBA Draft trades ever

11 May 2001: Kobe Bryant
11 May 2001: Kobe Bryant /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 21
Next
11 May 2001: Kobe Bryant
11 May 2001: Kobe Bryant /

Sometimes an NBA team can improve its fortunes by one sound NBA Draft trade. Here are the 20 best trades made during an NBA Draft of all-time.

There are several ways to build a great team in the NBA. The most obvious is through the NBA Draft coming each summer. It has been an exciting television event for over 30 years, as teams that are in the cellar have their shot at landing a franchise-changing superstar of their own.

While few teams are lucky enough to draft their own transformative talent in the top part of the NBA Draft lottery, there are plenty of examples of where good to great teams have extracted talent from the middle of the first round to even late in the second round of some NBA Drafts.

Though the NBA Draft lottery and NBA free agency have been the most high-profile for teams to try to get better in the offseason, one often overlooked component of team building is through trades during the NBA Draft.

People often associate trades with the overhyped NBA trade deadline, as that is when the rumor mill is in full swing. However, there have been dozens of times where a team greatly improves itself with just one draft day trade. Entering the 2016 NBA Draft, here are the 20 best NBA Draft trades of all-time.

Next: 20. Ty Lawson from Minnesota Timberwolves to Denver Nuggets.