Portland Trail Blazers Affiliated With D-League's Fort Wayne Mad Ants

Joel Odom at Oregonlive reports that the NBA and D-League announced the upcoming affiliations between NBA teams and their D-League counterparts. Affiliations allow NBA teams to assign their players to the corresponding D-League team.

The Blazers are one of thirteen teams affiliated with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. This arrangement means the Blazers will essentially share one D-League team with twelve other NBA teams. If the Mad Ants do not have space on their roster for an incoming Blazer that player may be sent to another D-League team.

Here is the NBA's description of the arrangement:

The Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the lone independent NBA D-League Team, will be affiliated with the remaining 13 NBA teams. To accommodate assignments to Fort Wayne, a flexible assignment system will be utilized when an independent NBA team assigns a player at a time when the Mad Ants already have either the maximum of four NBA players on assignment or two assigned players at the position of the NBA player who is being assigned. In either event, the NBA D-League will identify to the assigning NBA team any singly-affiliated NBA D-League team that is willing to accept the assigned player, and the independent NBA team assigning the player will choose a team from among those teams to assign the player. If no singly-affiliated NBA D-League team is willing to accept the assigned player, he will be assigned to one of the non-NBA-owned single affiliate teams pursuant to a lottery.

Last February, the Blazers announced plans to part ways with their single-affiliate team, the Idaho Stampede.