It is always a gamble to trade a draft pick projected to be a valuable lottery pick with little or no protections on it, and in many cases, such a move can come back to bite the team that did it pretty badly.
Among the 30 teams of today’s NBA, analyst Frank Urbina of HoopsHype fame assembled a list of 13 examples of such a trade taking place with the Celtics occupying two of those slots. The deals in question led to Boston picking up Hall of Fame big man Kevin McHale and All-NBA small forward Jayson Tatum (drafted by McHale’s teammate and former team president Danny Ainge, no less).
