Professional sports teams move in three directions. They progress, regress or don’t move at all.

An example of a progressing team is the Baltimore Ravens. A regressing team is the Seattle Mariners, who have been on a downward slope since 2001.

What plagues most franchises in sports is the refusal to change a seemingly “good” thing.

In the NFL, The Miami Dolphins refuse to rebuild.

In the two years after the Dan Marino era, the Dolphins made the playoffs. Miami tried to use a good defense, Jay Fiedler and the running of mediocrities like Lamar Smith, Kareem Abdul-Jabar and J.J. Johnson.

This tactic got them to the second round once. In the Wanstedt Era, the team has brought in high-priced free agents to make the defense better. Although on paper they had a great defense, the Dolphins finished in the middle of the pack in yardage allowed.

What this team has to do is rebuild: cut Zack Thomas and Junior Seau or trade them for draft picks.

After all, the Dallas Dynasty began because the Vikings traded every draft pick they had for Hershel Walker.

Baltimore is going down the rebuilding path whereas the Dolphins are stuck where they are.

In the NBA, the Minnesota Timberwolves have finished fourth or fifth in the Western Conference for the last four years. They have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for the last seven.

The team never changes because fans and ownership view the team as good. The general manager believes that surrounding Kevin Garnett with role players like Terrell Brandon, Latrell Sprewell and Wally Szczerbiak will help them win.

It has not, and they keep losing.

They can’t surround Garnett with quality players because they do not have enough room under the cap. Garnett gets paid $20 million a year.

The choices are to either ask Garnett to defer some of his money or trade him. The Timberwolves will do neither, assuring themselves of early playoff exists for eternity.

Because baseball has no cap, chronic success is much less fatal even though the last two World Series winners have been won with homegrown talent.

The Florida Marlins won the World Series because they traded aging stars (Kevin Brown, Al Leiter and Gary Sheffield) for prospects, including Brad Penny and Luis Castillo. They also drafted Josh Beckett.

The Angels won mostly because they strung a bunch of lucky hits together, but they also had great homegrown pitching. Jarrod Washburn became great for a year.

But last year the team made no changes and finished third.

In baseball, teams either go up or down. If a team does not sign or develop players, like Seattle, that team will face a quick demise.

Teams that are creative, such as the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, fare well. The chronic success analogy doesn’t work in baseball because few teams make the playoffs.

The theory remains the same. A team that is not expanding or contracting is declining.