NBA Trade Deadline 2018: 5 greatest trade deadline deals ever

4. Pistons/Celtics/Hawks (2004)

Detroit Pistons get: Rasheed Wallace and Mike James

Boston gets: Chucky Atkins, Lindsey Hunter and Tony Allen (via draft pick)

Atlanta gets: Bobby Sura, Zeljko Rebraca, Chris Mills and Josh Smith (via draft pick)

The 2004 Detroit Pistons were already a strong, balanced team featuring the talents of Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Ben Wallace, and Mehmet Okur before adding Rasheed Wallace to their stacked roster. The Philadelphia native was the final piece of the puzzle for Motown’s eventual championship run later that season.

Wallace was traded from Atlanta, where he played only a single game after being sent there from Portland in another move mere days earlier. With Detroit, he finally found a roster with enough talent to take him to the promised land.

He went on the help lead the Pistons to the NBA title. Detroit upset the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers super-team that featured the big-four of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Gary Payton, and Karl Malone. The loss marked the end of the Shaq/Kobe Lakers, as Los Angeles traded the big man to Miami the following offseason.

While things may have been on the rocks for the Lakers’ duo, a win in the Finals that year could have helped keep the team together, allowing Los Angeles to continue to dominate the league for the next decade. But it wasn’t in the cards.

Instead, Detroit put together one of the great runs in their franchise history, returning to the Finals the following season (2004-05), making three more appearances in the Eastern Conference Finals (2005-08), and leaving behind a legacy as one of the most balanced, complete teams in modern NBA history.