While it takes more than one player to lose a series, this season was about Vince Carter, and the Magic’s decision to trade for him last summer in lieu of re-signing Hedo Turkoglu. Here’s what I wrote about the move in mid-July:

Let’s see, your team just lost in the Finals — losing two games in overtime — and your main ballhandler is a free agent. What do you do? It’s tough to create the kind of chemistry that gets a team to the Finals, so you re-sign him, right? Not the Orlando Magic, who balked at Hedo Turkoglu’s $10 million-per-season asking price and instead pulled the trigger on a trade for Vince Carter. So essentially they gave up their most consistent player (Turkoglu) and a budding star (Courtney Lee) for the 32-year-old Carter. A healthy Jameer Nelson (along with a savvy mid-level signing) may have been enough to put this Magic team over the top, but now we’ll never know.

Turkoglu has had his problems in Toronto, but on a per minute and per shot basis, he was just about as productive as he was in Orlando. We’ll never know if the Magic would have beaten the Celtics if they had kept their Finals core intact, but one thing is for sure — the Vince Carter move was a bust. Against Boston, he averaged 14-4-2, shot 37% from the field and just 21% from long range. The question remains: Does Vince Carter have what it takes to win an NBA Championship?

If the Magic have learned their lesson, they’ll try to move Carter this summer. He has one more year on his contract (at the tune of $17.5 million) and another year that is a team option. So he essentially has an expiring deal, which could be valuable to a team trying to get out of another big contract. Three trade partners spring to mind…

Perhaps Golden State would be willing to take on Carter’s contract for a year to get out of the four years remaining on Monta Ellis’ (26-4-5, 45% shooting) deal, which would allow the Warriors to fully commit to rebuilding around Stephen Curry. Along with Jameer Nelson, Ellis would give the Magic the league’s smallest backcourt, so that may not be a very good idea.

The 76ers would almost certainly be willing to trade Elton Brand (13-6, 48% shooting), though that would force Rashard Lewis to the three. (Andre Iguodala is another possibility, but the Sixers would want something else in return, like Marcin Gortat.)

Finally, the Wizards would love to unload Gilbert Arenas (23-4-7, 41% shooting), and Carter would take some of the scoring pressure off of rookie John Wall. The move would also create a ton of cap space (for the Wizards) in the summer of 2011 for a possible run at Carmelo Anthony. Arenas would represent another roll of the dice for Orlando, but if he can get back to All-Star form, he could give the Magic the playmaker on the perimeter that they had hoped to find in Carter.

I’m not sure if any of those options sound good to Magic fans, but this is where the team is at with regard to Carter. Given his inability to win in the postseason, no one will want him at his current salary, so the possible trade partners are limited to teams looking to dump a bad contract of their own.

Or the Magic could elect to hold onto Vinsanity and tweak the roster around the edges, hoping that this core has better luck next season. Clearly, that hasn’t been Otis Smith’s style, so I’d expect a big change or two as Orlando tries to find the right players to surround Dwight Howard.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Monta Ellis is still unhappy with the Warriors. Jonathan Abrams (via Twitter): “Monta Ellis may ask out of the #Warriors too soon, via some1 in his camp. Still bitterness on both sides from the mo-ped fiasco.” I don’t know why Ellis is angry at anyone but himself when it comes to his moped accident. The team invests a ton of money in a guy and he’s out riding around on a moped. Unbelievable.

T-Mac doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone…but himself. Tracy McGrady: “I don’t have to prove to nobody that I still got it.” If NBA contracts weren’t guaranteed, McGrady would have been cut long ago. Even though he’s just 30 years old, T-Mac has missed 109 games over the last four seasons, or 33% of the Rockets’ games. He’s in a contract year, so he’s highly motivated to prove that he’s healthy and ready to contribute. With Yao Ming out for the season, T-Mac’s return may be the most compelling story coming out of Houston.

LaMarcus Aldridge isn’t happy about the lack of a long-term deal. This is a little perplexing. Unless Aldridge’s camp thinks that he’s a max player, I don’t see why it would be difficult to come to a number. I pegged his value at $13-$14 million per season and that seems reasonable for a guy with his skill set.

Stephen Jackson doesn’t think the Warriors are getting better. Jackson: “It feels like we’re not getting better.” Jackson said in late August that he was “looking to leave” the Warriors, and Don Nelson said that the team would move him if the right deal came along.

Andre Miller doesn’t seem too happy in Portland. It might be the fact that Steve Blake is still the Blazers’ starting point guard, or it might be the tedious media events he was required to attend, but this is a situation to watch.

On his draft buzz blog [Insider subscription required], Chad Ford dispelled the notion that the Warriors made a promise to Monta Ellis not to draft a point guard at #7. He spoke with GM Larry Riley, who said that the topic never came up. In an interview with KNBR, Ellis confirmed that the meeting was about getting everyone on the same page and said that if the team drafted a point guard, he was going to “do anything to help the team win.” Riley told Ellis that if they do use him at the point, his primary responsibility will be to “get guys more involved” and help his teammates “get off.”

Riley told Ford that he would “like to have a little beef” and said that the Warriors could “use more size and toughness.” Does this mean that they’ll draft Jordan Hill at #7, if available? Probably, but Riley also said that the Warriors didn’t “have a gaping hole at any position” so that they can “draft the best player available.”

Ellis thrived at off guard playing alongside Baron Davis two seasons ago, averaging 20.2 points, 3.9 assists and 4.9 rebounds, and shot an astounding 53% from the field.

The economy is really starting to take its toll on professional sports, and the NBA is no different. Bad contracts are bad even when the economy is pumping, but they really stand out in tough times like these. So I decided to look through the payrolls team-by-team to try to identify the worst contracts in the NBA. I expected to list 15-20 names, but I ended up scribbling down 68. That’s right, there are no fewer than 68 bad contracts in the NBA.

I didn’t include any of the players that are in the final year of their contracts because…well, what’s the point? They’ll be off the books in a few months anyway. Instead, I wanted to focus on those contracts that are going to haunt teams for years to come, so to be eligible, players have to have at least a year left on their current deals.

It’s tough to compare someone making superstar money to an average, everyday role player, so I split these 68 contracts up into three groups: the Overpaid Role Players, the Not-So-Super Stars and the Injury-Prones. I will rank them from least-worst to most-worst with the thinking that I wouldn’t trade the player for anyone further down the list but I would trade him for anyone previously mentioned. So, for example, if a guy is listed #7 within a particular group, I’m not trading him for anyone ranked #6-#1, but I would think seriously about moving him for a guy that is ranked #8+.

So let’s start with the role players and go from there…

(Note: In most cases, I don’t blame the player himself for his outrageous contract. The fault lies with the general manager that inked the guy to the deal. However, this rule goes out the window if the player has a history of only producing in his contract year – I’m looking at you, Tim Thomas.)

Yesterday, we took a look at John Hollinger’s Eastern Conference playoff odds. Today we’ll look at the Western Conference.

1. LA Lakers (100)
2. Phoenix (96.5)
3. Portland (96.3)
4. Denver (93.8)
5. Utah (88.6)
6. New Orleans (81.1)
7. Dallas (80.6)
8. Houston (78.1)
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9. Golden State (34.4)
10. Memphis (20.3)
11. San Antonio (19.9)
12. Sacramento (7.7)
13. Minnesota (2.6)
14. L.A. Clippers (0.1)
15. Oklahoma City (0.0)

He looks like he has the West pegged save for one big problem. I don’t see how the Mavericks – who are 5-7 at full strength – will make the playoffs but the Spurs – who are 5-6 and missing two of their three best players – will not. Hollinger’s formula is probably heavily mathematical, so he can’t account for injuries, and that’s part of the problem with taking a pure statistical approach to something like this. Tony Parker is due back in mid-December, while Ginobili is ahead of schedule and should be back a bit earlier. The Spurs are getting good play from George Hill and Roger Mason, and if they can stay near .500, they shouldn’t have a problem making the playoffs if Parker and Ginobili come back strong.

As for the Mavericks, barring a major injury to one of the other eight teams (including the Spurs), I don’t see how they make the postseason. Denver’s 8-4 record seems a little odd, but they are getting good play from Chauncey Billups, who has changed the team’s attitude defensively.

Even without Monta Ellis, Golden State has surprisingly kept its head above water, and if the Warriors can stay close to .500 until January (when Ellis is set to return), they would be a dark horse to make the playoffs.

Al Harrington doesn’t get along with Don Nelson and wants to be traded.

The Warriors forward confirmed late Tuesday that he and his agent, Dan Fegan, met earlier with vice president Chris Mullin to reiterate Harrington’s unhappiness with coach Don Nelson and his desire to be moved.

“If you ask me if I want to be traded, I’ve been wanting to be traded since the end of last season,” Harrington said. “With everything that happened in the summer and coming into training camp, I was hoping things were going to work out between me and Nellie, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

“It is what it is. That’s being all the way honest. That’s putting it out there. Do I think that Al might have to be traded? Do I think it’s going to work with me and Nellie? I don’t think so. That’s how I feel.”

Harrington had never made it a secret that he felt underutilized and often out of position in Nelson’s system, but the forward/center had always done what was asked, and, until now, kept his major grievances in-house.

Harrington was irked by Nelson’s decision to play him only 17 minutes in a preseason game that Nellie said he would coach as if it were a regular season game.

With only one more year (not including this season) remaining on his contract at the tune of $10 million, he shouldn’t be too hard to move. He averaged 13.6 points and 5.7 rebounds last season for the Warriors, down from 17.0 points and 6.4 rebounds the season before. His minutes were trimmed, which is the reason for the drop off.

With Monta Ellis missing at least the first few months of the season, the Warriors are not off to a very good start.

Offseason Movement: The team elected not to pursue free agent Baron Davis and struck out on the Elton Brand sweepstakes. They did sign Corey Maggette to a big contract and also acquired Marcus Williams from the Nets for a conditional first round draft pick.
Keep Your Eye On: Monta Ellis, G
With Davis gone, this is Ellis’ team now. His reign got off to an inauspicious beginning when he hurt his ankle while riding a moped around Mississippi and then lied to the team about it. He will have to mature quickly, because the Warriors need a leader, but it’s not clear when Ellis will be able to return to action. For their part, the Warriors have suspended him for 30 games for lying about the injury, but he probably won’t be ready to play by the end of the suspension, so it just amounts to a gigantic fine.
The Big Question: Is Don Nelson the right guy to lead a rebuilding project?
Nelson always seems to have one foot out the door, so it’s unclear if he has the commitment or the patience to coach this team for much longer. They lost a great player in Baron Davis, acquired a good player in Corey Maggette, and will miss Monta Ellis for at least part of the regular season, so all else being equal, it’s more likely than not that the Warriors will take a step back this season. I think that the next time Golden State makes the playoffs, there will be a different coach steering the ship.
Outlook: In Maggette, Biedrins, Stephen Jackson, Al Harringon and Brandan Wright, the team does have a number of talented players, but they lack a star to bring everything together. Ellis is supposed to be that guy, but since he’ll be sidelined for a while, the aforementioned players will have to raise their games for the Warriors to be in the playoff hunt in the talented West.