How lopsided was the Boston Celtics' trade with the Brooklyn Nets in the summer of 2013?
Apparently the NBA mulled implementing a rule that would ensure no team repeated the Nets' mistake.
In a column Friday about the recent trend of teams parting with multiple first-round picks in blockbuster trades, ESPN's Zach Lowe shared an interesting nugget about the fallout from that Celtics-Nets megadeal.
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"The damage was so severe, several front-office executives said they never expected to see another trade featuring three or more future unprotected or lightly protected picks going from one team to another," Lowe wrote.
"The league in 2017 even considered a rule that would have banned a team from trading swap rights in between seasons in which it owed its first-round picks outright, sources say."
As a refresher, here were the details of that 2013 trade:
Boston Celtics
Nets receive: Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry, D.J. White
Celtics receive: Gerald Wallace, Kris Humphries, Marshon Brooks, Kris Joseph, Keith Bogans; first-round picks in 2014, 2016, and 2018; and the right to swap 2017 first-round picks.
Pierce lasted just one season in Brooklyn, while Garnett left the Nets for Minnesota at the 2015 trade deadline. Celtics fans know what happened next: The C's used Brooklyn's 2016 first-rounder (No. 3 overall) to select future All-Star Jaylen Brown, then swapped picks with the Nets in 2017 to land Jayson Tatum, who earned First-Team All-NBA honors this past season.
In this example, the NBA's rule would have disallowed the 2017 pick swap, since it was sandwiched between 2016 and 2018 first-round picks and amounted to the Nets sending three consecutive first-rounders to Boston, two of which turned into the best young duo in the league.
The rule proposal "never got far off the ground," according to Lowe, and teams continue to trade picks with abandon: The Minnesota Timberwolves just sent four first-rounders and a first-round pick swap to the Utah Jazz -- led by Danny Ainge, who orchestrated the 2013 Celtics-Nets trade.
The Wolves may come to regret that deal if the Jazz hit on a few of those first-rounders, but it's hard to imagine Utah landing a duo like Tatum and Brown, who helped lead the Celtics to the 2022 NBA Finals and have the C's well-positioned to compete for a title in 2023.