Nothing rankles fans and intensifies ulcers in NBA executives like dredging up bad trades from the past.

So, hey, let's go for it!

These exchanges were toxic enough to warrant a good rehashing, if only to check in on the fallout.

The deals we're considering go back as far as the 2019 offseason, and it's striking how trades that old are still having direct impacts on the teams involved—even when the ill-fitting players are no longer on the roster.

Even if reliving the past is painful, maybe some of these bad deals will serve as cautionary tales. Next time an executive has an itch to give up a decade's worth of draft picks or otherwise mortgage his team's future for the shiny, aging star on the market, maybe they'll think twice.

Who are we kidding? Trades like these, which teams on the losing end would undo if they could, are never going away.

Russ to the Lakers in 2021

The Trade

Los Angeles Lakers acquire Russell Westbrook, a 2024 second-round pick and a 2028 second-round pick from the Washington Wizards for Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell and the No. 22 pick in the 2021 draft (Isaiah Jackson)

Already a few stops into his late-career journeyman phase, Russell Westbrook was the exact wrong kind of fit for the 2021-22 Los Angeles Lakers.

The Lakers seemingly hoped that Westbrook could shoulder more of the playmaking load, which would allow LeBron James and Anthony Davis to take it easy during the regular season. But that logic always fell apart when looking ahead to playoff scenarios in which Westbrook's poor shooting and (at the time) shaky defensive reputation would make him more of a hindrance than a help. The Lakers, not so far removed from their 2020 title, wouldn't derive any benefit from Russ in the games that mattered the most.

Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who started for another champion in Denver after L.A. dealt him, would have been far better supporting pieces around James and Davis. That's exactly what they were when they contributed to the Lakers' 2020 championship.

During Westbrook's lone full season with the Lakers, he averaged 18.5 points per game while shooting a horrific 29.8 percent from deep. Lineups including Russ, James and Davis got outscored by 3.0 points per 100 possessions.

Los Angeles finished 33-49 that season, good for 11th in the West. Concerns about Westbrook's limited playoff impact turned out to be hypothetical, as the Lakers watched the postseason from home.

The trade looked even worse with time. To unload Westbrook to the Utah Jazz the following season, the Lakers had to give up a 2027 first-round pick. The principal asset coming back to L.A. in that exchange was D'Angelo Russell, a former All-Star whose scoring was helpful but whose defensive ineptitude was one of several factors that shortened the Lakers' 2023 and 2024 postseason runs.

The Lakers set two years of James' late prime on fire, burning flexibility and real chances to contend in exchange for a player who cost them more assets to jettison and never projected as a good fit in the first place.

Nikola Vučević to the Chicago Bulls in 2021

The Trade

Chicago Bulls acquire Nikola Vučević and Al-Farouq Aminu from the Orlando Magic for Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr., 2021 first-round pick (Franz Wagner), 2023 first-round pick (Jett Howard)

The Bulls would have lost this trade even if it had been Vooch for Carter straight up, as the young center whom they sent to the Magic outperformed his veteran counterpart across the subsequent three seasons. According to Dunks and Threes' catch-all cumulative metric, Carter produced a total of 17.2 Estimated Wins during that span, while Vučević's total was 15.1.

Chicago has won only one playoff game since the trade, despite operating with a win-now attitude the entire time. Meanwhile, the rebuilding Magic finished ahead of the Bulls in the standings this past season and racked up three playoff victories.

There's no debate whatsoever about which team's future is brighter. It's not an exaggeration to say Franz Wagner, whom the Magic acquired with one of the two lightly protected first-round picks that the Bulls sent as sweeteners, would be Chicago's most valuable asset today.

This deal was an across-the-board failure for Chicago. Hasty, ill-advised and marked by a staggering misjudgment of what actually drives winning basketball—hint: it isn't score-only centers in decline—the trade was indicative of the Bulls' maddening commitment to chasing mediocrity.

That trait persisted over the following seasons, and it's a big reason why Chicago has one of the league's bleaker long-term outlooks.

It's really hard to lose a trade on short-, mid- and long-term time horizons, but the Bulls managed to pull that off with one of the worst deals in years.

The Fateful Swap of Paul George and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in 2019

The Trade

LA Clippers acquire Paul George from the Oklahoma City Thunder for Danilo Gallinari; Shai Gilgeous-Alexander; unprotected first-round picks in 2022, 2024 and 2026; an unprotected 2021 first-round pick (via MIA), a protected 2023 first-round pick (via MIA) and swap rights on first-round picks in 2023 and 2025

For a long time, it was tricky to evaluate this blockbuster trade from the summer of 2019. Kawhi Leonard's decision to sign with the Clippers over the Lakers reportedly hinged on it, which allowed the Clips to justify such an exorbitant price. It was as if L.A. was trading all of those assets for George and Leonard.

Not only that, but the Clippers essentially got a full five years to prove the cost was justified. The thinking was that any outlay of draft capital would have been worth it if the Geroge-Leonard tandem turned the Clippers into a contender. It's hard to know what exact level L.A. would have had to reach to make the deal worthwhile. Maybe a Finals appearance would have done it.

If you held out on judging the deal until as late as the 2024 postseason, you weren't being totally irrational. An extremely high-risk trade with a potential payoff as great as this one deserved the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible.

Now, though, the verdict is officially in.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the MVP runner-up this season, and his Thunder, bolstered in part by all the picks they got from the Clippers, made it one round further than the Clippers in the playoffs. Meanwhile, George can soon become a free agent (player option) and is no lock to stay in L.A., the Clippers lost in the first round partly because Leonard couldn't stay healthy for the fifth straight season, and OKC, not the veteran Clippers, has the rosier short- and long-term outlook.

That makes the George-for-SGA trade a disaster for L.A., which must now figure out how to preserve some optimism as it heads to a brand-new arena with an aging roster and limited flexibility.

At the time, nobody knew SGA would become an All-NBA first-teamer and signature superstar in the league. He got third billing behind Danilo Gallinari and all of those draft picks in every story about the trade at the time. If the Clips or Thunder knew Gilgeous-Alexander would turn into this, the deal would have been more than fair to both sides if it hadn't included a single draft pick.

That's the risk the Clippers ran by giving up everything to pair George and Leonard. It was a reasonable gamble, but five years down the road, it clearly didn't pay off.

James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets in 2021

The Trade

Brooklyn Nets acquire: James Harden, 2024 second-round pick (via Cleveland)

Houston Rockets acquire: Victor Oladipo; Rodions Kurucs; Dante Exum; Brooklyn's 2022, 2024 and 2026 first-round picks; pick swaps with Brooklyn in 2021, 2023, 2025 and 2027; Milwaukee's 2022 first-round pick

Indiana Pacers acquire: Caris LeVert; 2023 second-round pick (via Houston)

Cleveland Cavaliers acquire: Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince

This is the biggest trade we've covered so far. It involved so many moving parts and parties that it required a more thorough team-by-team breakdown.

We're operating from the perspective of the Nets here, so the analysis is a little cleaner: Brooklyn sacrificed more than a half-decade's worth of draft picks for what amounted to 16 games of James Harden playing alongside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

Harden played only 80 contests across portions of two seasons with the Nets, but a combination of factors—his own injuries, injuries to teammates, off-court distractions mostly provided by Kyrie Irving—meant this superteam was only super for the equivalent of about a month's worth of games.

Brooklyn got a pair of first-rounders (2023 and 2027) back when it dealt Harden to the Sixers, but it sent the former to the Utah Jazz in a separate deal. The latter is top-eight protected and could convert to a second-rounder if it doesn't convey by 2028. Ben Simmons was the headlining salary match coming back for Harden, and he's turned out to be perhaps the least valuable dollar-to-production contract in the league since that trade.

Oh, and Jarrett Allen went out the door as well. Caris LeVert, a quality sixth man, joined him.

The Nets made out like bandits in subsequent trades, replenishing their draft stock with all the picks they secured in the Kevin Durant deal with the Phoenix Suns. That doesn't change the fact that the Harden move was an objective mistake.

Just imagine how much better off Brooklyn would be today with Allen, LeVert, all those picks, the haul it got for Durant and the more modest return it received in the trade sending Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks.

Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns in 2023

The Trade

Phoenix Suns acquire Kevin Durant and TJ Warren from the Brooklyn Nets for Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, four unprotected first-round picks (2023, 2025, 2027, 2029) and a 2028 first-round pick swap

Some will argue that Kevin Durant is the caliber of player that if you can get him, you just do it. Forget the asking price, the long-term fallout, his history of souring on situations he picked out himself—none of it matters because KD is such a singular, transcendent talent.

That's clearly what Suns owner Mat Ishbia believed when he pushed this trade through in direct conversations with Nets owner Joe Tsai during his first official week on the job. He simply gave up way too much for a player who'd essentially made it clear he wanted to be in Phoenix.

Durant's first trade request, which went unfulfilled, came on the eve of 2022 free agency and gave the Nets some options. He listed the Suns and Miami Heat as preferred destinations and even later gave Brooklyn the alternative of firing head coach Steve Nash, which it ultimately did after failing to move KD before the season. Miami was out of the picture by the time KD reiterated his request. That left only the highly motivated Suns in a one-team bidding war, which they somehow lost.

Four unprotected first-round picks, a first-round swap and two valuable young forwards was too high of a price for an aging superstar who has so far delivered the Suns one playoff series victory (first round, 2023) and two head-coach firings.

Ishbia, straight-faced, is claiming that "the house is not on fire" and telling reporters that 26 other general managers would switch their rosters for the unbalanced, injury-plagued, underperforming, top-heavy, ridiculously expensive one that can't be rebuilt through the draft.

The truth is that Phoenix's outlay for Durant didn't yield a contender. Instead, it was the first step in putting the franchise in an impossible position where the only clear way to regain flexibility is to flip KD for what'll almost certainly be a worse package of incoming assets.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.