Magic ‘Collects’ A Check Before Paying Its Dues

Tomorrow arrived yesterday.

Orlando wasn’t supposed to win. NBA history says a franchise has to pay its dues. It has to have the obligatory heartbreaks. It has to lose before it wins.

The Detroit Pistons had to blow a lead to Boston one season and lose a seventh game to the Los Angeles Lakers in another before they broke through with consecutive world championships.

The Chicago Bulls had to lose and lose to the Pistons before they three-peated championships. Even the Houston Rockets had to lose a best-of-seven free-for-all with the Sonics one season before winning the NBA title the next.

Orlando, generally considered the league’s next super team, should have lost Sunday’s seventh game to Indiana. A loss would have been part of its evolution.

Next year would have been the Magic’s year. This year, if history were to be repeated, would belong to Indiana, or San Antonio, or maybe even the Sonics.

Those teams had done their time. They had lost Game 7’s. Their hearts had been scarred.

But in the biggest game of the franchise’s history, the 6-year-old Magic played as if it grew up in this neighborhood. Sunday, the Magic played with great confidence and fierce defense.

Big game? Big deal.

Game 7? Game on.

The Magic played as perfect a seventh game as a coach could diagram, beating the Pacers 105-81. It played like the Celtics of old. It played with the flair of the other Magic’s Lakers. It played with the surety of Isiah Thomas’ Pistons or Michael Jordan’s Bulls.

The Orlando Magic. Get to know it. This team is going to be as familiar a part of our Junes as graduations, weddings and picnics.

Shaquille O’Neal will be exploding dunks into the next millenium. Anfernee Hardaway will be dishing and driving and dropping 3s; the Magic’s new Magic. Horace Grant will be collecting rings like Liberace.

Disney World? Forget it, I’m going to the O-rena.

This has been a wondrous spring.

Reggie Miller’s eight points in 18 seconds in the first game of Indiana’s series with New York.

Nick Van Exel’s two 3s in the last seconds that gave the Lakers one more chance against San Antonio.

Patrick Ewing’s season-saving drive to the basket in the Knicks’ Game 5 win over Indiana.

The four potentially game-winning shots that were made in the final 13 seconds of Indiana’s fourth-game win over Orlando.

Hakeem Olajuwon’s nightly brilliance, playing 18 games in 36 days, improbably leading Houston back to the NBA Finals.

Basketball hasn’t given baseball a chance to get off the mat.

Now we have Houston against Orlando in a delicious surprise of a Finals.

Orlando had no playoff wins before ‘95. Before these playoffs, O’Neal was to basketball what Andre Agassi once was to tennis - all image, no results.

But now, Agassi has Australian Open, U.S. Open and Wimbledon titles and is marching toward this year’s French Open title. And O’Neal is on the verge of winning the first of many championships.

O’Neal vs. Olajuwon is the next great basketball rivalry. O’Neal is the future; Olajuwon the past and present. They are as dissimilar as fingerprints.

Hakeem: a graceful, spinning top from Lagos, Nigeria, with a resume as long as Shawn Bradley. He is a completed work of art.

Shaquille: a powerful thunderbolt from San Antonio who never has played in a series this important. He is hoop’s unfinished symphony.

They are the dramatic contrasts who give grit to these Finals.

You wonder how many more miracles Olajuwon has left. He has carried Houston through slugfest series with Utah, Phoenix and San Antonio.

Can Olajuwon’s whirlybird post play get O’Neal in foul trouble? Will he force Orlando into enough double teams to allow his shooters to get open 3s?

The temptation is to pick Orlando in six games. If O’Neal and Olajuwon cancel out each other, the game should fall to the point guards.

Orlando’s are better.

But form doesn’t seem to hold in the mid-‘90s NBA. Phoenix and San Antonio, Seattle, Chicago, Indiana and New York are evidence of that.

These Finals should have been too early for the Magic and too late for the Rockets.

But these teams seem made for this June. A fortnight of Hakeem and O’Neal? Who could ask for anything more?