On the surface, the NBA's winners and losers are decided by what goes on on the court. All that frantic action - the full-court fast breaks, astonishing defensive efforts, and crunch-time buzzer beaters - seems to suggest that basketball is a sport more purely in the hands of its players and coaches than any other in the world. In the NBA at least, this is a huge misconception. A murky network of boardroom deals and contract signing orchestrates as much of the league's future as action between the hoops, if not more. Trades can have an unbelievable impact, setting up teams for decades of success, cementing legacies, and making or breaking the careers of the plyers themselves. The tactics of the trade-game are complex. Teams sign friends of a particular target in order to lure him to their squad; prospects are scouted and selected long before they graduate college, their future destination decided by shady pre-draft day deals; ageing franchise players are banded together in last-gasp attempts at glory before their knees give out. Here are ten of the most successful trades in NBA history - not that their orchestrators would be certain of any guaranteed success upon completing the paperwork. Every single NBA trade is a big gamble; these are merely the ten which paid off the most.
