Hey-oh!

Hey-oh!

You are now listening to the free agents,

the new summertime podcast from those basketball guys.

You like the OGs of iTunes, the pioneers of the podcast, the kings of the memes.

We did six seasons and a Zoovi.

And now you're listening to The Free Agents.

Thank you for listening right now.

If you want to follow us on Twitter or Instagram, that's the

Free Agent's 19. If you want to email us for any details, that's the Free Agents 2019 at gmail.com.

We're getting that out of the way first because it's another emergency podcast.

Joining me across the table, I haven't seen him since June 14th. The International Man of

Mystery has been to every single country in Europe as far as I'm concerned, looking tanned and well-rested, Lee Ellis. Hey, Trey, great to see you. J.D., too, thanks for having us here in your basement. Last time I spoke to you, it was from Evi Oviedo in northern Spain. It's great to be here in person. You were hiding in a stranger's closet. That's right, I was. I was. I'm curious who you got to take that picture. We'll get to that later, but also Lee, spoiler alert. Also joining us in the basement. It's his basement, the man that makes the magic happen. J.D. Hello. There he is, and here we are. It's me, it's Lee, it's J.D. we're in the basement also joined by Lee's son, Oscar on his lap and his other son, Sebastian, building with some Legos. You might hear him a little bit. Maybe they got some hot takes on this big time trade. We're also going to check in with Skeets and Taskeets down in Florida, Tass up in Ontario. No vacations are safe. It's all emergency podcasts from here on out. That's the only way to do it. Sound the air horns. Well, I was just like, I was trying to set you up, Lee, to say, wow, this has been a really exciting summer, but you can tell we've been apart from each other for a month. The chemistry is not there. It makes you wonder, is it going to work for Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul? We've taken a month off from seeing each other. These guys haven't played together in seven years. How in the world could this work? Nonetheless, I want to know your first impressions when you heard the news of the trade last night. Russell Westbrook going to the rockets, they're getting him and his contract, $170 million. The Thunder get Chris Paul, his contract of $120 million for three years.

Thunder also get first round picks from the Rockets in 2024 and 26, plus pick swaps in 2021 and 2025.

It's a big haul for the Thunder, but the Rockets get Russell Westbrook.

What do you think, Lee?

Yeah, my first thought was sort of shock. I know that since Westbrook has kind of spoken to

Sam Presti and the ownership there in Oklahoma City, since the Paul George trade went down,

that he was going to move on. It happened probably a little bit quicker than I thought. I thought

it might have taken a few more weeks, but my initial reaction was this is pretty interesting because the

Rockets denied there was any tension between Chris Paul and James Harden, but clearly there was.

And I think that Darrell Mori really didn't have a lot of options to move on from Chris Ball

...