All-Time Top 10 Milwaukee Bucks Trades
By Adam McGee
5. Parting with the legend
Milwaukee Sent: Kareem Abdul-Jabber and Walt Wesley
Los Angeles Sent:Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Junior Bridgeman and Dave Meyers
There’s no winning trade when you have to say goodbye to one of the greatest players of all-time. Even more so when you’re left with little choice in doing so as the star is vocal about his desire to play elsewhere.
What the Milwaukee Bucks did in trading Kareem to the Lakers, was to at least salvage some valuable pieces to keep their team in good shape moving forward.
If it was just a matter of trading Kareem, there likely would have been better deals on the table. Abdul-Jabbar is believed to have said that he and Milwaukee weren’t “culturally compatible“, and as a result if the Bucks didn’t find a way to get him to a bigger, more diverse city, he would do so himself as a free agent later that year.
It can’t have been easy, and the trade remains divisive to this day, but the Bucks did the right thing. Kareem moved to LA, and in Winters and Bridgeman the Bucks took back two players who were not only integral in the team’s success through the 70s and 80s, but also became franchise legends.
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