Springfield Trades Away Dan Dickau, Morris Almond for Pu-Pu Platter

Somebody might want to tell the Springfield Armor brass that even though they're currently in last place with a 5-22 record, tanking by trading their best players is not helping - the D-League draft order is determined at random, not via record.

Today they traded away two of the more NBA-ready players in the D-League - newly-acquired Dan Dickau, most recently with the Phoenix Suns this fall, and the D-League's leading scorer Morris Almond - for Kyle McAlarney, Noel Felix and Tony Bobbitt.  While McAlarney, Felix and Bobbitt are serviceable D-League players I think it's okay to say the Armor got worse end of the deal twice in one day.

The Armor could've boasted a starting lineup of Dan Dickau, JamesOn Curry, Morris Almond, TJ Cummings and Marcus Campbell (fairly formidable in the D-League), but are now relegated to boasting a starting lineup featuring JamesOn Curry and stuff.

For the past week, I've been teasing Dan Dickau coming into the D-League both on RU's Twitter and Facebook accounts (hint: follow me if you want the underground stuff that isn't quite full story worthy), but heard he was being traded, so I didn't want to post anything on RU until I figured out his whereabouts.

Well, I found his whereabouts!  Dickau will join the Fort Wayne Mad Ants tomorrow night after a sign-and-trade netted the Armor Notre Dame's Kyle McAlarney.

In short, I think the Mad Ants dominated this trade, as McAlarney's essentially a poor-man's version of Dickau. They are both undersized, unathletic white guards, and though Dickau is 31 and McAlarney is 22, neither can really be described as having 'ridiculous upside'. McAlarney's a better pure shooter, at least from distance, but Dickau is the superior player everywhere else as far as I'm concerned (especially as far as being a point guard goes).

The other trade that went down is the D-League's leading scorer, Morris Almond, being traded from the Springfield Armor to the Maine Red Claws. The Red Claws gave up Tony Bobbitt and Noel Felix (both of which are a long ways from re-joining the NBA) for Morris Almond and TJ Cummings (the son of NBA great Terry Cummings, not the porn star (definitely don't google it)).

It's clear to me that while they're both expansion teams, one team clearly gets it and one team ... is building around JamesOn Curry.

If Maine can get their talent to mesh (and I have enough faith in Red Claws assistant Randy Livingston that they'll be able to), they have the most NBA talent assembled on one team in the history of the D-League.

Let's take a look at the hodge podge of former/future NBA talent now assembled in Maine:

PG: Russell Robinson, former Jayhawk point guard, NCAA National Champ and last cut of the Cleveland Cavaliers

SG: Maurice Ager, first round pick in 2006 of the Dallas Mavericks

SF: Morris Almond, first round pick of the Utah Jazz in 2007

PF: Trey Gilder, who began this season with the Memphis Grizzlies

C: Paul Davis, former NBA draft pick and three year NBA veteran

6th Man: Billy Thomas, NBA-caliber shooter, leader, former Cleveland Cav/Washington Wizard/New Jersey Net

Not bad, eh?