If you're a tenured Boston Celtics fan, you of course remember the famous trade from 2013 that sent Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for a handful of players and multiple draft picks. This is not a memory that has really been able to leave anyone's mind for the last dozen years because of how impactful it ended up being.
Trading away two franchise legends was a difficult decision for the Celtics to make, but it simply had to be done. Pierce and Garnett were past their primes, and the organization knew they wouldn't be able to be team cornerstones for much longer. As such, the choice was going to be between getting rid of them now or waiting until they didn't have any trade value left.
Boston opted for the smarter choice, and got back a very favorable return from the Nets. The Celtics obtained Gerald Wallace, Kris Humphries, Keith Bogans, MarShon Brooks, Kris Joseph, three future first round draft picks and the option to swap first round picksin 2017.
It's the last part of that previous sentence that stands out. The fact that Boston got the chance to swap picks in 2017 means they ended up with Jayson Tatum, and the rest is history from there.
The Celtics pulled off a heist in 2013
The Nets were in an interesting place at the time. Having just moved their franchise from New Jersey across the way to Long Island in Brooklyn, they were searching for ways to drum up interest in the team locally. When your goal is to sell merchandise, put fans in seats and create excitement around the team in your new local area, there's not many quicker ways to do that than by getting some household names in the building.
Brooklyn's experiment worked for a little bit, but their success was very short-lived. They earned a top-six playoff spot in 2014, making it to the Eastern Conference semifinals before getting ousted from the postseason by LeBron James and the Miami Heat. It was ironic, because Pierce and Garnett switched teams and situations and they still couldn't seem to escape LeBron.
In the following season, the Nets went back to the playoffs but lost in the opening round this time. By the end of that season, just two years after the trade was made, neither Garnett nor Pierce would still be on Brooklyn's roster.
It was a totally failed experiment for the Nets that ended up setting them back years. But for the Celtics, it was a transformative moment in an overwhelming positive way. They were able to move on from a couple of former cornerstones while paving a way for the future.
Fans in Boston will forever look back on the summer of 2013 as a time that radically changed the course of this franchise's history and legacy forever.