The Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets have been trade partners six times.
Both the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets have long histories attached to their franchise name and in the history of both franchises, they have intertwined six times through a trade agreement.
The first trade between the two franchises occurred all the way back in November 1980, with the most recent trade between the two teams occurring in June 2017.
Using Basketball-Reference’s Trade Partners tool, we have embarked on a series to find the best trade that the Lakers have made with all 29 other NBA franchises.
The Los Angeles Lakers’ best ever trade with the Brooklyn Nets:
The Los Angeles Lakers took a risk on an old, injured center who was past his prime but when he was in his prime was one of the best players in the league. Bob McAdoo was exceptional coming into the league, especially from his second to fourth season in the league with the Buffalo Braves.
McAdoo averaged 32.1 points and 13.8 rebounds per game from 1974 to 1976. Overall, in his first eight seasons, McAdoo had five all-star appearances to go along with his 26.8 points and 11.8 rebounds per game.
McAdoo was injured during the 1980 season and only played 16 games, six with the Pistons and 10 with the Nets. In December of the following season, while still injured and marred in contract disputes with the Nets, McAdoo was traded to the Lakers for essentially nothing: a second-round pick who turned into Kevin Williams, who played 260 games in the NBA and averaged 4.9 points.
McAdoo was not the same player that he was early on in his career with the Lakers but he did return to being a reliable role player for a title-contending team. McAdoo put together four solid seasons on the Lakers, winning a championship in his first and last season with the team.
In LA, McAdoo averaged 20 minutes per game while scoring 12.1 points and hauling in 4.4 rebounds per game. He was one of five Hall of Famers on the 1984-85 Lakers alongside Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Jamaal Wilkes.
There is a very close second-best trade and it is the trade that the Lakers have done most recently with the Brooklyn Nets, shipping D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to Brooklyn for Brook Lopez and a 2017 first-round pick.
This might not seem like a great trade in hindsight because of Russell’s emergence as a legit young all-star but it set the ball in motion for the long-time-coming of two superstars in LA by freeing up Mozgov’s horrendous contract.
That pick also ended up being Kyle Kuzma, who might be primed to eventually be traded, but right now, he is the only standing member of the young core that occupied Los Angeles.
However, even if his Hall of Fame years did not come with the Los Angeles Lakers, the fact that the team got Bob McAdoo for a non-consequential second-round pick is an absolute steal.