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).
Let’s see what Urbina had to say about the two diamonds in the rough.