Oubre is currently enjoying Phoenix, but he still laments how his ordeal went down.

Many players struggle with the news itself when it comes to being traded, especially for the first time. It’s an utter shock. And when the public finds out before they do, without any warning to soften the blow, it only makes the experience tougher.

“If you’re working on trading somebody, let them know,” Oubre said. “Let them know beforehand when it crosses your mind. They want us to communicate if we’re sick or if we have personal issues at home and can’t make it to work, so let us know if y’all think you’re gonna trade us.”

It’s a fair point, that Oubre raises, but perhaps not pragmatic. Teams sometimes don't want to risk having a disgruntled player on the roster when a deal isn't even guaranteed to be agreed upon. Vince Carter is a respected future Hall of Famer, with a 22-year career spanning four decades, and even he has discovered transactions that included himself without a heads up.

Like Oubre, Carter was dealt from the East coast to Phoenix. It was 2010, and Carter became aware of the move through another unconventional manner.

“I found out through the [ESPN] ticker that I was traded from Orlando,” he said. “I was sitting with my family on December 17. We were watching TV. I just said, ‘Hey, let me flip through the channels.’ And then I thought I saw my name and I was like, ‘Hold up, hold up.’ I saw Vince Carter traded to the Phoenix Suns. That’s how I found out.”

Vince Carter was watching TV when he realized he became a Phoenix Sun.

It’s even happened to retired players.

Randy Foye laced up his sneakers for seven different franchises over 12 seasons. He found out that his first NBA team was moving on from him through an NBA blog site. On another occasion, a push alert from the NBA app revealed the news.

When the latter deal happened, Foye says members of the Denver Nuggets front office let him know that a trade could potentially go down. He remembers being told before practice to "just go downstairs and hang out in the lounge, and if it goes through, we'll be the first people to let you know."

That, of course, didn't happen.

“I’m just browsing the web looking at what’s going on,” Foye said. “Then, I put my phone down, started looking at the TV cause NBA TV was on, and I look back at my phone and an alert pops up. I unlock my phone, and it says, 'The Thunder acquire Randy Foye' … So I hear [some front office personnel] coming down the stairs to let me know, but I already knew. So I sneak out the side door. I didn’t have my car at the practice facility, my wife had dropped me off. So I typed in an Uber and asked them to take me to my house.”

Asked why he left the facility, Foye continued.

“I was giving them my all," he said. "Gary Harris is my young guy, and to be honest, they started playing Gary Harris more. They let me know during the second half they’re going to try to develop him, and I was fine with it. So I wanted to be traded, but I didn’t want to move because my girls were in school and my wife and family were there. So when it all went down, I didn’t really want to see anyone because I was there for a while, and I know it would have been emotional. Everyone handles it differently.”

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When a deal is completed, the two front offices -- usually having done their business over the phone -- each notify the league.

From there, coaches, owners, agents and players are looped in.

“Each one of those people you talk to, you don’t know who they’re going to talk to,” said one former Eastern Conference general manager, speaking anonymously. “Very quickly, you go from two people agreeing on a deal to 10 people knowing about the deal, and [those] 10 people have all of their series of relationships.”

In addition to the amount of parties involved, the methods teams use to contact a player varies. A general manager can’t always pull a player to the side before practice, or be standing outside the shower with his bags and a message attached. When players are on the road during the season (like Covington), or overseas during the offseason (like McLemore), the line of communication is even more complex.

“Sometimes it’s the game of telephone,” the former GM said.

Kyle Korver learned he was traded from Philadelphia to Utah through voicemail.

During a Western Conference road trip in 2007, Kyle Korver received an incoming call from across the country. It was then-Sixers general manager Ed Stefanski with some significant news to share. The only problem? Korver was asleep.

“I missed the phone call, saw it and was like, ‘Why are they calling me?’” said Korver, who then learned he was traded to the Utah Jazz through the voicemail Stefanski had left. Korver, a 16-year veteran who’s been dealt five times, had no hard feelings. “Teams honestly do their best to tell players first, but with so many sources, it’s hard for them.”

What makes it even harder is the unique swiftness of today’s platforms and devices. Practically everything moves quicker than it did when Korver was first traded. Despite that, learning on social media can still sting more than a call from an agent or team representative -- for some, at least.

For others, it’s just reality.

“How you find out is how you find out,” Aminu said. “You’re still getting traded.”

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Khari Arnold is a senior producer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter .

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