Los Angeles Lakers: Best trade in team history with the Miami Heat

The Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat have been trade partners only three times.

In an ongoing series here at Lake Show Life, we have been looking at the Los Angeles Lakers‘ best trade with every NBA franchise. We already covered the team’s best trade with the Memphis Grizzlies today, but that was a bit obvious, so we decided to double-dip and also look at the best ever trade with the Miami Heat.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat have been trade partners only three times in the history of the franchise. The first-ever trade between the two teams was in 1988, with the most recent trade occurring in 2009.

There is a pretty obvious trade that jumps out as the best trade that these two teams have ever agreed to, especially considering the other two trades are non-impactful.

Fun fact: The Los Angeles Lakers’ most recent trade with the Miami Heat included trading away Patrick Beverley

The Los Angeles Lakers’ best trade with the Miami Heat:

Despite being one of the most talented duos in NBA history, the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal partnership had run its course after the 2004 NBA Finals and just over a month after the Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons they found a new home for Shaquille O’Neal.

That new home would be Miami, where he could go on to have another three all-star seasons which was highlighted in the 2006 NBA Finals where he won NBA Championship no. 4 with Dwyane Wade.

While it always hurts to lose a superstar of Shaq’s caliber, the Los Angeles Lakers had to do it and they got a fairly decent return out of it. Caron Butler was fairly solid for the Lakers but only played one season in LA while Brian Grant added nothing to the team.

Most notably, the Lakers got one of the most important players of their back-to-back title-winning teams five years later in Lamar Odom, who blossomed into one of the best role players in the league and even has a Sixth Man of the Year award under his belt.

The Lakers used the 2006 first-round pick for someone decent in Jordan Farmar. Farmar was never exceptional, but he was a solid backup point guard for the team. The Lakers did select Farmar over Rajon Rondo, though, and it would have been interesting if they would have gone with Rondo instead.

Seibutis never played in the NBA.

Of course, the dominance of Shaq outweighs what the Lakers got in return but it was clear that Shaq was at the end of his truly dominant days and the Lakers made the right decision in moving forward and solely handing the team over to Kobe Bryant.