The different flavors of good, bad, and ugly that NBA trades come in.
The "State Of The NBA" Trade: Juwan Howard For Christian Laettner (Also Known As: The Trade For The Sake Of Trading)
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Sometimes, a trade represents more than just basketball things — exchanging one player for another, or four players for another four players, or one player for a booster pack of Pokemon cards. Sometimes, a trade represents THE ZEITGEIST, i.e. basketball as a philosophical enterprise, i.e. the Spirit Of The League. For example, exchanging Juwan Howard and a bunch of dudes for Christian Laettner and a bunch of dudes is like the American Graffiti of the early-2000s NBA: a bunch of steroidal contracts and supplemental players being treated like leading men. It's glorious stuff.
The "I'm An Idiot" Trade: The Celtics Reacquire Antoine Walker
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Oh, Danny Ainge. First, you trade Antoine Walker, the cornerstone of your team and primary reprobate, to the Mavericks nine days before the start of the 2003 season. Then you get him back at the 2005 trade deadline. (You will once again trade him away in 2006, but let's not get hung up on that.) Not only was this trade a weird mea culpa toward the bonkers Walker, but it also saw the Hawks — the second team Walker played with since being traded by Ainge originally — just being like, OK, this isn't going to work, we'll take that first-round draft pick. Antoine Walker is a Greek tragedy.
