5. Trading Caron Butler to the Wizards for Kwame Brown
After the Shaquille O’Neal trade, most people expected Lamar Odom to come in and be the second-best player alongside Kobe Bryant. It was Caron Butler that actually instantly had chemistry with Bryant and was the Lakers’ second-leading scorer in the first season after that mega-deal.
Los Angeles Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak decided to sell high on Butler the offseason after that surprising season and tried to buy low on a former number one overall draft pick, Kwame Brown. Perhaps they wanted to pair Kobe with another big man to mimic what they had with Kobe and Shaq, there was just one problem, Kwame could not play according to Steven A. Smith.
Brown never developed into the star that many thought he could become based on his potential coming out of high school. He might be the biggest example of a bust that probably could have benefitted from going to college instead of going straight to the NBA.
Bryant began to get frustrated carrying mediocre rosters, and specifically with Brown and they never developed any sort of cohesion on the floor. The only reason this trade is not higher on the list is that Kwame was eventually a part of the trade for Lakers great Pau Gasol.
This was yet another case of the Lakers trading away a player that became an All-Star for the team they traded them to. In the next few seasons that followed Butler made the All-Star team a couple of times for the Wizards, and he was even on the Mavericks team that swept the Lakers out of the playoffs and won the championship in 2011.
To this day Kwame is still mocked for not living up to his number one overall pick status and is labeled as one of the biggest draft busts of all time partly because of his time with the Lakers. Recently, he has even went on his social media to rant about how he is unfairly criticized for his time in the NBA and has called out former NBA players and challenged Steven A. to a fight because of it, which caused questions about his mental stability.