Los Angeles Lakers: Best trade in team history with the Chicago Bulls

The Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls have been trade partners seven times.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls are two of the most recognizable franchises in basketball history, yet the two teams have never really exchanged any notable players.

The Lakers and Bulls have been trade partners seven total times, with the most recent trade happening in 2016. When you break down the trades, most of them are inconsequential and did not really change anything, for either side.

In an ongoing series here at Lake Show Life, we are out to find the best trade that the Lakers have made with every single other NBA team in the league. Using Basketball Reference’s Trade Partners tool, we did just that.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ best ever trade with the Chicago Bulls:

This trade is not really that riveting but it shows just how small the deals the Lakers and Bulls have made with each other. The best trade that the Lakers have pulled off with the Bulls involved an okay role player that most Laker fans today probably don’t know.

This trade took place in September of 1968, eight months after the two teams did trade business for the very first time. Ironically, in that trade, the Bulls traded Erwin Mueller to the Lakers and this trade was simply getting Mueller back.

Erickson was coming off of a solid third season with the Bulls when he was traded to the Lakers and he put together five decent years as a serviceable role player on the Lakers. In those five years, Erickson averaged 9.2 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in 26.5 minutes per game.

Erickson was part of the only Jerry West-led team to actually win the NBA Championship (and who were the best team in franchise history). However, he did not play in the playoffs that year and missed out altogether, playing in only 15 games.

Erickson was s far bigger contributor than Mueller would have been and is probably the best player that the Lakers have received in a trade from the Bulls.

After Erickson, the players that the Lakers received in a trade from the Bulls were the likes of Mike Lynn, Allen Murphy, Mark Landsberger, Dwight Jones and Jose Calderon. Landsberger was the only other player to play more than 50 games with the Lakers (206), although he averaged just 4.7 points and 14.3 minutes per game with the Lakers.

It is safe to say that the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls are not prominent trade partners, as neither side has really benefited greatly from any of these trades.