10 Times When NBA Superstars FORCED A Trade

we see it every now and then but it's not that common historically if nba superstars were unhappy in their current situation they would go to management and request a trade however there are certain times when things don't go their way maybe the front office doesn't want to trade them and sometimes this leads to a lot of tension between the player and team in recent years we've seen superstars just straight up sit out games to force a trade or threaten to not report to the team because their trade demand was getting stalled at that point their team loses all the leverage and they have no choice but to trade them in this video we're going to take a look at situations similar to that how's it going folks my name's andy and today here are 10 times when nba superstars forced a trade number 10 kyrie irving things were looking great for the cavs by the end of the 2017 season i mean yeah they just got crushed by golden states but they did win the championship in the previous year but with the addition of kevin durant it was a huge obstacle for them to overcome everyone knew that however for kyrie he was thinking about something else throughout his time in cleveland ever since lebron returned the spotlight has always been on him instead while kyrie was the secondary star at times he felt he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved and that everything was about lebron this or lebron that he started to get frustrated and since he already has a ring under his belt he was now seeking a new start according to former gm david griffin he explained why kyrie left it became really evident to kyrie that he wasn't going to have the template from which to find out how great he can truly be because he wasn't going to have the ball enough and when you're trying to be a point guard who makes everybody better that can be complicated so i think once we won the championship it became clear to him that maybe he was going to need to do something else that something else was to lead his own team on july of 2017 he requested a trade and made it clear to the cavs that he was not going to be back next season regardless so the organization had no choice and had to let him go the funny thing is even in boston he got overshadowed and then in brooklyn he was back to being the second or third best player so i guess he never really accomplished his goal number 9 dwight howard ah the good old dwightmare saga this banned for the entirety of the 2011-12 lockout shortened season as the tension reached an all-time high dwight howard at the peak of his career clashed with the organization and desperately wanted out well at least that's what we thought he cited the reason being the team wasn't working hard enough to build a contender which is fair and reasonable but the issue was he kept changing his mind according to a report he would demand a trade but then after a great streak he backed off on his demand but then after another bad stretch of games he would go back to the front office and demand another trade overall in this one season he demanded a trade at least three separate times to either the nets the mavs or the lakers for most of the year the nets were his primary destination which was kinda weird considering they were even worse than the magic at the time not only that but near the end of the season he got his coach stan van gundy fired he told the front office if he was gonna stay in orlando he demanded van gundy be fired but he ended up not staying anyway and van gundy was a great coach so this rightfully pissed off everyone then dwight got back surgery at the end of the season so he missed the playoffs too ultimately with everything going on this was the deciding factor the magic always intended to keep him but with all these shenanigans plus the uncertainty of his back problems they eventually traded him to la this was a deal that was initially thought of as a very bad deal for the magic but over the years it turns out it was pretty bad for everyone number 8 chris webber as the first pick of the 1993 draft chris webber came in strong right off the bat he had a successful rookie season averaging over 17 points and nine rebounds a game winning rookie of the year helping the warriors get back into the playoffs again it seemed like he was going to be the cornerstone of the franchise for the foreseeable future and everything seemed to be going well except behind the scenes there was a lot of drama reportedly weber at 6 foot 10 around 230 pounds he was an incredibly versatile player he could pass and had the ball handling skills of a wing player that's why he felt like he should play power forward like a point forward type of style from the high post i mean when it came to size he definitely was more of a power forward than a center as most centers back then were pretty massive however coach don nelson did not think so even back in the 90s he was experimenting with small ball and insisted that webber play center a position he really did not enjoy as a result weber activated his one year escape clause to leave the warriors they had no choice but to honor his request this was a classic example of a player and coach not getting along and losing weber set the franchise back for a long time number 7 anthony davis most of us saw this happen right in front of our eyes and we know how disastrous this entire season was for the pelicans initially the 2018-19 campaign started off as usual for the pelicans but as the losses piled up and the trade deadline approached davis demanded a trade while he stated afterwards that he didn't want the trade request to be public his agent rich paul had a different idea he informed nba insider roge and went public with the request in hopes of pressuring the pelicans to trade him before the deadline rich paul was widely speculated to have leaked this trade request and he told espn anthony wants to be traded to a team that allows him a chance to win consistently and compete for a championship anthony wanted to be honest and clear with his intentions and that's the reason for informing them of this decision now that's in the best interests of both anthony's and the organization's future the pelicans organization issued a statement in response relative to specific talks of a trade we will do this on our timeline one that makes sense for our team and it will not be dictated by those outside of our organization we have also requested the league to strictly enforce the tampering rules associated with this transaction this led to davis getting fined fifty thousand dollars from making a public trade demand which was against the rules the pelicans benched davis for nine consecutive games as the deadline approached but they still couldn't find a trade however since they didn't want to risk davis getting injured or anything that would tank his trade value they sparingly played him for the rest of the season until he finally got traded over the summer it was a very awkward situation but this saga made it very clear that players have all the power in the world and even with the fine it's not much for him so davis hardly got punished at all it led to questions on whether or not this type of behavior is okay and executives across the league felt very uncomfortable about it number six kawhi leonard kawai's exit from the spurs was kind of similar to davis exit from the pelicans but it was more complex it started off as being an absolute shocking trade demand the spurs just came off of having a spectacular season and despite getting swept by the warriors that was mostly because kawaii got injured they were still one of the top teams in the league and expected to bounce back when kawhi recovers over the summer the spurs gave control of kawhi's injury rehab process to his management team instead of the spurs own doctors afterwards the timeline for his rehab process was very strange greg popovich and the spurs had no idea what was going on as kawhi's uncle and his other managers weren't telling them anything there was a lot of speculation on what was going on everything from him having a degenerative quadricep injury to possibly sitting out games on purpose nobody knew outside of kawhi and his managers by january of 2018 with the lack of communication the rift between him and the organization grew despite being medically clear to play kawhi still wasn't playing and he wasn't even cheering for his team during the playoffs this tension came to a climax in march where the spurs held a players only meeting where tony parker and manu ginobili called him out and questioned why he wasn't playing then parker made a jab that his own quad injury was 100 times worse than kawhi's yet tony recovered quickly it was a conflicting year for the spurs and the cracks were too big to ignore there was no room for reconciliation at the end kawhi's trade request was granted well sort of he wanted to go to la which did not happen immediately so i guess it wasn't granted in the way he wanted but then he still won the championship in toronto and shortly afterwards he went to los angeles like he wanted number 5 carmelo anthony mello's time on the nuggets was actually very good he led them to seven consecutive playoff appearances but by 2011 the team was stagnant and mello sought for a different scenery born in brooklyn mello always had a connection to new york and really wanted to be in that spotlight even though the knicks wanted to wait until the offseason to sign him melo pushed hard for a trade cause he wanted to sign an extension in new york and eventually get another massive contract a few years down the road as a result the nuggets were forced to trade him and the knicks were forced to give up so many assets almost their entire starting lineup and multiple picks for mello the thing is neither team wanted to do this trade in the first place the knicks preferred to wait it out until the offseason to sign him but the threat of mello possibly signing with the nets was too risky for them the nuggets of course never wanted to deal him in the first place because they felt like they were in a good spot and wanted to re-sign him the only winner of this trade was mello himself number 4 vince carter at one point vince carter was the most hated man in canada after his six seasons in toronto vc racked up five all-star selections numerous all nba selections but the raptors as a team were rapidly falling off by late 2004 carter wanted to leave but it was mostly because he was fed up with upper management with a new gm rob babcock the raptors were supposedly going to change and move into a new direction but instead nothing changed at all carter made a public trade demand but the raptors had no obligation to trade him as he was worth a tremendous amount of value with nowhere to go carter decided to take matters into his own hands he would purposefully play poorly and not give any effort at all he was sandbagging and making a joke out of himself and the entire team it was very evident he wasn't trying at all because right after he got traded to the new jersey nets he put up the best numbers of his nba career you could see a quick comparison of his numbers in the 2004-5 season before and after the trade to the nets i'm not sure what's worse purposely sitting out games because you want to get traded or playing in the games and giving zero effort whatsoever fortunately the relationship between him and the city of toronto slowly healed over time everyone realized that regardless of his actions he brought basketball to the entire country and brought a level of excitement for a sport that was rapidly expanding number 3 charles barkley in barclay's first eight years in philly he had the time of his life he was mentored by dr j and moses malone early in his career he met his future wife in philly he was making boatloads of money millions of dollars to lift his family out of poverty and he developed into an absolute superstar a top five player in the league during his prime but by the early 90s after years and years of struggling to make a championship run barkley got fed up in an interview decades later he recalled his time in philly and this is what he said the only regret i have is i would have been traded out of philly sooner because my last two years there were miserable i was going to be traded every week i finally had enough and said i'm not playing here anymore not only that but he felt like the sixers best days were behind them so at the peak of his career in the summer of 1992 barkley demanded a trade and let the sixers know he wouldn't be back for training camp the team had to cave in to his demands and find a suitable deal for him that summer they actually thought they had a deal with the lakers for about two weeks barkley thought he was going to la but instead philly retracted the deal and accepted another trade with the suns it was a tumultuous summer for barkley but they needed to get a deal done this trade ultimately turned out quite poorly for the sixers as they had very little leverage since everyone knew barkley was gone anyway they didn't get much back in return number 2 shaquille o'neal the 03 to o4 lakers saw them compile an absolute star-studded super team but as we all know that ended badly with a five-game series loss in the nba finals to the pistons this team widely regarded as one of the greatest we've ever seen fell to the lowly pistons a team that very few people believed in afterwards the lakers imploded the biggest storyline all summer and not just all summer but all season long was the relationship between kobe bryant and shaquille o'neal the two of them didn't get along off the court as both were fighting to be the franchise cornerstone shaq didn't like how kobe was getting all the attention and a much heftier contract which meant less money for him kobe on the other hand reportedly told lakers management that shaq was lazy and he wasn't going to be back if shaq remained on the team whether it was kobe forcing him out or shaq forcing himself out nevertheless the two of them weren't gonna work out and with shaq getting older the team sided with kobe laker's former assistant coach tex winter stated o'neil left because he couldn't get what he wanted a huge pay raise there was no way ownership could give him what he wanted shaq's demands held the franchise hostage and the way he went about it didn't please the owner too much and finally at number 1 wilt chamberlain now this was a very interesting one and probably the first time in nba history where a superstar really forced the hand of the organization in 1968 chamberlain was playing for the 76ers and doing quite well actually in the previous year he won his first ever championship after struggling against the celtics for a decade in 1968 he lost to the celtics again and shortly after he demanded a trade the reasons for him demanding it were a bit unclear at first many speculated he was just frustrated with losing to the celtics over and over again and he demanded to be traded to los angeles because he yearned the la spotlight that was the simplest explanation but there were details left unseen years later wilt claimed that former sixers co-owner ike richmond who briefly owned the team from 1963 to 1965 promised wilt's equity in the team he basically promised wilt a part-time ownership stake in the sixers unfortunately richmond suddenly passed away in 1965 and the new sixers owner irv koslov had no intention of giving wilt equity in the team honestly i'm not even sure if that was legal to do so back then nowadays i believe if you're an active nba player you can't own any stakes in an nba team i don't know maybe it was allowed back in the day either way wilt was unhappy he was no longer getting equity in the sixers so he demanded a trade in an article by jack ramsey if he did not get traded he was apparently going to jump to the aba they were losing him regardless it hurt a lot too they gave up the guy who was at the time the greatest nba player ever for a bunch of scraps for wilt this paired him up with two all-time players in jerry west and elgin baylor so at least he was happy now anyway those were 10 nba superstars who forced their team to trade them i know this was a long video but if you're still here thank you so much for watching through it what are your thoughts on these trade scenarios do you think in the future the nba would put more protections for the team to not lose so much of a player forces the trade of course we already have things like trade exceptions but in scenarios like with kawhi or anthony davis it seemed like their teams couldn't do anything but cave in to their demands or else they'll just sit on the sidelines is this a problem that needs to be addressed let me know your thoughts in the comments thank you all so much for watching and of course i'll see you next time [Music] peace

Channel: Andy Hoops

Views: 940,093

Keywords: nba basketball, nba history, nba trivia, nba conspiracy, nba story, nba analysis, nba mystery, best nba youtuber, andy hoops, nba superstars traded, nba worst trades, nba best trades, nba superstars, anthony davis, kawhi leonard, vince carter, kyrie irving, shaq, shaquille o'neal trade, nba trades, kobe bryant, shaq kobe feud, dwight howard, dwightmare, carmelo anthony, charles barkley, wilt chamberlain, shaq trade, anthony davis trade, chris webber

Id: bMDmFdYFNss

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021