The 5 worst NBA trade deadline deals ever

With plenty of potential for blockbuster trades at the upcoming NBA trade deadline, which deals stand out as cautionary tales and some of the worst trades of all time?

Nothing can sink a team quicker than a catastrophic trade. Whether it’s a team on the edge of contention, a group on the rise, or a franchise who are merely trying to escape from the NBA dungeons, the trade market offers the greatest promise and the most crushing pitfalls.

Missed draft picks hurt, but they don’t immediately set a team back like a terrible trade can.

To identify some of the worst deals to have ever taken place at the often busy NBA trade deadline, we have to dig a little deeper than just presenting the losing side of what could be classified as some of the NBA’s greatest deals.

For this exercise, let’s categorize the worst trades as those when front offices tried to run before they could even crawl, when ideological fits were prioritized over coherent roster shape and depth, and, worst of all, when organizations deviate from any inkling of a long-term strategy for what has the potential to be an instant loss.

If an NBA GM’s job is to just win enough of the battles so that their team has a viable chance of winning the war, nothing screams out terrible trade more than undoing smaller victories along the way for one over-reactionary deal.

With all of that in mind, let’s put some of the worst NBA trade deadline deals of all-time under the microscope.