Welcome back to another edition of the Vertical podcast with Chris Mannix, and it is a special bonus free agency edition. Bobby Marks, the front office insider for the vertical. He joins me. We recap the Chris Paul deal. We talk about Phil Jackson's departure in New York, and we look ahead to Gordon Hayward's free agency, Blake Griffin's free agency, and some under-the-radar guys that could make an impact on their teams or different teams sometime next year.

All right, let's go.

Joining me on the pod, Bobby Marks, the front office insider for the vertical, making

one of his many appearances, and sadly, his last appearance here on the vertical podcast.

What's up, Bobby?

Hello, Chris. How are you?

I'm going to miss these little chats, Bobby. These sort of bi-monthly chats that we tend to have here. Oh, I agree with you. I won't miss you busting my balls about the Boston trade.

But I think it bothers my wife more than it bothers me. It doesn't bother me anymore. I've grown accustomed to, and I know we can have fun with it. How many people do you have to block on social media after I take one of my annual shots at you, not even annual, a couple of times of year shots at you for that trade? You know, it's funny, Chris, I was in L.A. about a couple weeks ago, and I went out to get like Starbucks at 7.30 in the morning, and I'm, you know, I like to look at my notifications because I, if people ask me questions, I like to respond, you know, good questions, I had some guy say, like, hey, I know you were the coffee guy there when you went to the finals in those two years

there, and you had no role in that team, and you screwed that Nets team up for good. I was like, whoa, man, I can't even go out and get coffee at like 7.30 in the morning. People are harsh, man. I take it's only sports. Do you hit the block button there? I do. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Block and mute. Yeah, mute is my thing.

Like, I want to make people still follow me and still click on what I'm saying. But I'd like let them be talking at air. Like just as long as I don't have to hear them, the mute button is one of the greatest, you know, sort of technological advances of Twitter in the last five years. No, it's a great tool.

I just figured I was blocking and now it's just mute. They can still follow me, but I'm not responding to you. Yeah. All right, let's go out with a bang here. And I guess we should start. Before we get to free agency, the news that broke over the last couple of days, and let's start with Chris Paul, the now former L.A. Clippers Guard. I saw you tweeting late Thursday night about how hard the Clippers and Rockets' front office had to work to get this

deal done. I mean, it seemed like the Clippers or the Rockets rather, were acquiring as many

non-guaranteed contracts that could to make the financials of this work.

Before we get into that part of it, what do you think of this deal? Houston, we have seen

Darrell Mori in the past make big swings at big free agents, big trade acquisitions.

Some he gets, some he doesn't, some work out, some don't. What do you think of the Chris Paul

acquisition from a rocket's perspective? Well, I give Dowell credit, and I said this at the trade deadline when they made the Lou Williams trade, and they gave up a first round pick. You know, some teams are content to kind of sit on the sidelines, and he addressed it yesterday that, you know, it's basically an arms race here and that he's loading up. and it goes back to it's always about the next move and you take that Lou Williams

contract. it's basically an arms race here and that he's he's loading up and uh it's and i it goes back to it's always about the next move and you take that lou williams contract and now you package it with uh you know with beverly and decker and in those non guarantees and now he's got some work to do though now he's got to figure out that bench that is the thin bench outside of Eric Gordon there.

It's, you know, most of those minimums.

I don't know where they'll wind up if they even stay there. But I like it for Houston.

I mean, I think if you ask yourself, you know, Beverly was potentially could be going

into his last year at a non-guarantee and Lou Williams was going into the last year. If you were able to move guys who maybe weren't part of your future and get Chris Paul for four or five years here, I think a lot of people would sign up for it. Look, you add Chris Paul to the mix. You're in a good spot. I think Mike Dantoni is going to find a way to make this offense even more efficient than it was last year.

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