Rick Pedone
Sports

Editor Can it be only three years since the Orlando Magic, with the league’s most dominating center, came within a missed layup of perhaps knocking off the L.A. Lakers for the NBA championship?

It seems more like 30.

Look where the Magic are, now.

Bounced ingloriously from the first round of the playoffs, again.

They fired the coach. They fired the GM. The center, Dwight Howard, will soon fire them.

The Magic have found the time tunnel, back to 1996, the year that the team’s other superstar center, Shaquille O’Neal, left for the Lakers.

But, this is worse. Then, the Magic still had one superstar on the roster, Penny Hardaway, although Hardaway proved to be the typical NBA malcontent and soon organized a mutiny to drive away Coach Brian Hill.

What happened?

Bad trades? Bad drafts? Bad karma?

Maybe. I’d vote for bad management.

For all of his good intentions, owner Rich DeVos never got the right people in place after the team’s founding force, Pat Williams, retired.

What other reason is there for the Magic, again, to be reeling just a few years after reaching the championship series, a la 1995?

Does this franchise ever learn?

After totally botching it with Shaq, not so much because they didn’t resign him, but for not preparing for his departure, the Magic went into a decade-long funk.

They had a couple decent teams, a few good players, but former GM John Gabriel bet the house on landing free agents Grant Hill, Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady in 2000.

He, unfortunately, got Hill and McGrady. One with a bad ankle, the other with a bad attitude.

Meanwhile, Tim Duncan will probably win his fifth championship for San Antonio next month. Is it the Magic’s fault that Duncan didn’t come to Orlando? No. They made the offer, but Duncan is one of the rare NBA superstars who acts like a professional. He liked San Antonio and decided to stay.

Gabriel had to move some promising players to make cap space for Hill and McGrady, including Ben Wallace, who only developed into one of the NBA’s premier big men and won a championship at Detroit.

Meanwhile, McGrady scored a lot of points but sulked a lot, and the Magic slumped again.

The team got another chance. It hit the lotto when GM John Weisbrod made the right moves in the 2004 draft by taking Howard No. 1 overall and then trading for Jameer Nelson at No. 20.

The Magic again evolved into a championship contender. All that was required was to add the supplementary parts and Orlando looked like sure NBA gold.

Except, Otis Smith had other plans. Instead of a tweak here and there, Smith got antsy after the 2009 championship series and essentially blew up the team.

He shipped guard Courtney Lee, who had a good rookie season, to the Nets for aging superstar Vince Carter. Smith also got Ryan Anderson and made a couple of free agent signings to bolster the roster. It was a bold gamble. It didn’t work.

Smith then ignored the law of holes (Stop digging!) and kept making things worse by overpaying for NBA deadwood like Gilbert Arenas while trading away the team’s only legitimate backup center in Marcin Gortat.

Meanwhile, the Magic continued to draft stiffs, only occasionally hitting the board with a J.J. Redick or Lee.

Is it any wonder that Howard, a man-child with a cape, grew disillusioned, especially since Coach Stan Van Gundy  demanded accountability from Howard and his teammates?

So, here we are today, with Van Gundy and Smith gone, Howard soon to be, and Magic CEO Alex Martins doing verbal contortions to make it seem like, darn it, it’s all just a little misstep that will be rectified the minute Howard returns from L.A. to sign a new multi-year deal.

Martins said that he is looking for an experienced, winning GM.

So, the first name that pops up is Shaq’s. Great. Next, Charles Barkley can be the next Magic coach.

Consistently successful professional sports organizations are rare and the common thread among them is excellent management.

Those teams, whether you are talking about the NBA’s Lakers or Celtics, baseball’s Yankees or Cardinals, or the NFL’s Patriots and Steelers, have depth where it counts, in the front office. Management knows what it takes to win and how to reach its goal.

Is the Magic management inept? No, not inept so much as inconsistent and ineffective.

Some NBA teams never contend. They never spend.

The Magic try.

They spend.

They just make too many wretched decisions.