Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five teammates who were once traded for each other, and the video games that feature those stints.
While it’s become far more common – and some would say, acceptable – for stars to change teams nowadays, it’s always been somewhat rare for players to spend their entire career with one club. Even if a player does stay put, they’ll end up playing with a host of different teammates throughout the years. Between the players that join the team they’re on and the teams that they may go on to join, old rivals will become teammates, former teammates will reunite, and superteams will form, giving us plenty of interesting lineups to talk about…and of course, play with in video games.
Needless to say, trades also break up duos and teammates who no doubt enjoyed playing with one another. We’ve even seen former college teammates get traded for each other during the Draft, as Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison were back in 1998. A trade where former teammates end up being swapped for one another gets you thinking, specifically whether the reverse has ever happened. In other words, have any players who were once traded for each other later become teammates? It has indeed happened, and since I explore such trivia through the lens of the virtual hardwood, here are five traded players turned teammates, and the games featuring those pairings.
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