Los Angeles Lakers: Best trade in team history with Milwaukee Bucks

The Los Angeles Lakers have a pretty historical trade with the Milwaukee Bucks.

In an ongoing series here at Lake Show Life, we have been breaking down the best trade that the Los Angeles Lakers have made with every other franchise in the NBA. Today, we look at the best deal with the Milwaukee Bucks.

The Lakers and Bucks have been trade partners six times, with the most recent trade between the two teams occurring all the way back in 2001. The first trade between LA and Milwaukee occurred in 1968.

When talking about the best trade that the Lakers have ever made with the Bucks there is a quite obvious answer. Not only is this the best trade the Lakers have made with the Bucks, but it might also just be the best in franchise history and one of the best in NBA history.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ best trade with the Milwaukee Bucks:

In June of 1975, the Los Angeles Lakers traded for one of the greatest players in franchise history, who doubles as one of the greatest players of all-time, who wound up winning five championships alongside Magic Johnson for the Showtime Lakers.

If there was ever a time where the Laker benefitted from their massive market it was here. Kareem wanted to be traded to either the Lakers or the New York Knicks to play in a bigger market and the Lakers wound up being the lucky winners.

Kareem’s absolute-best years came with Milwaukee but the Lakers still received six elite years out of Kareem before he started to show some regression. Even then, once he ‘regressed’ he was still an all-star, one of the best in the league and was a key component of the team.

Kareem played all the way until the 1988-89 season at the age of 41 before calling it quits. He is second in franchise history in games played, third in points and first in both rebounds and blocks.

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The Bucks got some solid role players in return for Kareem, but nothing could replace the best player in the league. The most impactful player that the Bucks got in return was Brian Winters, who was a two-time all-star with the Bucks and played in Milwaukee for eight seasons before retiring.

I wish there was another trade that we could dive into as the second-best but there really have not been any other great trades worth mentioning between the two teams.

Perhaps the Bucks learned their lesson after making this deal with the Los Angeles Lakers. Who knows. What I do know is that Laker fans now hope that Giannis Antetokounmpo takes the same route to LA as Kareem once did.