In more recent years that Magic have drawn success, but have fallen short in the playoffs. I guess you can categorize the Magic's success by the frequent All Stars that have came and gone. Their are really three eras I can remember that the Magic have really had their dominiation.
The first would be the Shaq and Penny era in the mid-90s. With a starting line up of Penny Hardaway, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott, Horace Grant and Shaquelle Oneal, how can you not have a baller team. They got all the way to teh NBA finals in 1996, only to be swept by powerhouse Houston Rockets who had such names as Robert Horry, Sam Cassel and Hakkeem Olajawon.
The second era would have to be the T-Mac era. In the early 2000's the magic signed two big name free agents, Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill. Hill ended up having multiple knee issue which cost the Magic ALOT of money and never panned out to what they anticipated (I still hate Grant Hill for that). But McGrady was a different story. Through those years he was a one man band, scoring around 30-40 points a game! But it was never enough to get the Magic past the first round of the playoffs. You still hear trash talk to T-Max about how he has never been past the first round of the playoffs. Long live T-Mac!
Now, we are in the third era front runned by big man Dwight Howard. Howard was a big frame coming out from high school and the Magic believed they got their big man of the future. There was a good possiblity we could have gotten Emeka Okefor, who was coming out from college, but I am pretty sure we made the right call. Howard, along with All Star point guard Jameer Nelson have taken the Magic far into the playoffs, but again could not win the big game. This has become a burden for Howard and had him questioning his future with the Magic for the whole 2012 NBA season.
We are now in the playoffs, where the Magic got taken out by the Indiana Pacers. One of the main reasons was the absence of their golden boy, Dwight Howard. Now that Howard has recovered, their is still the question of whether he will be in a Magic uniform next year. Also raises the question for some other key components like Jameer Nelson and Ryan Anderson, who both have the option to sign with other teams next year.
Let me be the first to say that our GM Otis Smith has screwed us. Now we are back at the rebuilding stage and we are all awaiting the offseason to determine the future of this franchise.