In a rare public appearance since winning his battle with cancer and assuming his new role as Phils’ chairman, Montgomery said on the MLB Radio Network that it would take “a year or two” for the organization to determine Amaro’s long-term job status. He also called the GM “a pretty quality guy.”

If he had said those things in front of my WIP radio audience, he would have received a much-deserved belly-laugh. Amaro is the least respected sports executive over the past quarter-century in Philadelphia. In an Internet poll I conducted last Friday, 92 percent said they don’t need any more time to evaluate Amaro. They want him gone.

Unfortunately, Dave Montgomery was not joking. Ruben Amaro has been the GM for more than six years now, and was an assistant GM for a decade before that. Only in the bizarre world of the Phillies’ front office is 16 years insufficient time to draw some obvious conclusions.

As for the “pretty quality guy” assessment, that depends of the definition of GM. To his credit, Amaro has been one of the most accessible executives in recent Philadelphia sports history, one of the most honest and one of the best at handling criticism. Bravo to all that.

But in the NL East, he is losing – spectacularly. Amaro inherited a world-championship roster and has managed to turn it into the worst team in baseball. Don’t take my word for it. The sabermetric organization PECOTA last week ranked the Phillies’ roster 32nd in a field of 32, with a projected win total this season of 69.

There has been an ongoing debate in the past couple of years over whether Amaro or Montgomery deserved more blame for the team’s historically bad contracts with Ryan Howard, Jonathan Papelbon and Cliff Lee, and overly generous deals with Jimmy Rollins, Marlon Byrd and Cole Hamels, among others.

So far, the only defense for Amaro’s extraordinary failure as GM has been an unproven theory that Montgomery’s love for the 2008 champions forced the GM into those bad deals. The flaw in that argument, however, is Amaro’s equally horrific trade record.

Remember the original Cliff Lee deal? Amaro made it the same day he acquired Roy Halladay in 2009, saying it was imperative that the Phillies get younger. The three players he got for an ace pitcher in his prime were Tyson Gillies, J.C Ramirez and Phillippe Aumont. If you can’t recall those names, get out your Baseball Encyclopedia and look them up. They’re listed under “Stiffs.”

Add to that disaster both of the awful Hunter Pence trades, the curious signing of Cuban bust Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez and the unprecedented free-fall in attendance over the past three years, and there is nothing left to support Amaro’s performance as GM.

The only thing Dave Montgomery proved last week with his insane comments about Ruben Amaro is that the GM actually may not be the biggest problem with the Phillies right now. Even more alarming is that the decision-makers above him can’t make decisions, can’t do the most obvious things because of sentiment or incompetence.

After decimating a championship roster, mortgaging the future with some of the worst contracts in baseball and emptying half the seats in Citizens Bank Park with a last-place ballclub, Ruben Amaro is still being evaluated by his bosses. After working with him for 16 years in the front office, the Phillies still are not sure about him.

That’s hilarious.

***

Brett Brown waited 30 years for the chance to coach an NBA team. Someday, if he can escape the clutches of Joshua Harris and Sam Hinkie, he may actually get that chance.

For the time being, however, the Sixers coach is patrolling the sideline in a parallel universe, a bizarre place where owners like Harris and GMs like Hinkie value losses over wins, short-term failure over projected long-term success.

Brett Brown is doing a terrific job as coach of a 12-40 team. Joshua Harris and Sam Hinkie are worthy of neither his talent nor his effort. So far, in the latter stages of this second season of tanking, the only true star who has emerged is not Michael Carter-Williams or Nerlens Noel or Joel Embiid. It is Brett Brown.

It would have been so easy for Brown to follow the instincts of his bosses and offer only a token effort until the Sixers actually developed an NBA roster. Instead, he has taken a group of vagabonds and managed to spare fans the embarrassment of a historically bad season.

And amid all of the positive qualities Brown has displayed, patience has emerged as his biggest virtue. Other than booting the ball out of bounds early in the season and costing his team a chance to win, Brown has endured roster move after roster move, front-office intervention after front-office intervention, with admirable dignity and resolve.

The most vivid example of the evil intent of Brown’s bosses came last week when Hinkie dumped a valuable scrub, Larry Drew II, on the very morning after the coach had graded the young point guard an A+ for his three weeks with the team. If an A+ by the coach isn’t worth a minimum-salary contract, what is?

Brown said nothing about this latest act of sabotage by Hinkie, but it’s safe to say the coach is doing some serious soul-searching right now. He deserves better than the shameless dolts running the Sixers. We all do.

***

Chip Kelly is an inventive coach with a quick wit and an engaging energy. Despite a flop at the end of last season, he is as popular a leader as Philadelphia has had since Charlie Manuel won a World Series here seven years ago. But he’s pushing his luck right now. He’s really starting to irritate people.

The problem is, he doesn’t respect the fans. If he did, he would not have waited 42 days, and counting, since making himself available for questions. And make no mistake, there are more questions surrounding the Eagles now than at any point in his 25 months here.

For example, what led to the power struggle that forced Howie Roseman out of the GM job? How can he co-exist with Roseman after denying him the only NFL job he ever wanted? How will the new front-office structure affect the draft? And here’s the biggest one: After two seasons in the NFL, is Kelly qualified for these new responsibilities?

This is a curious time in Philadelphia sports, a down period in which more and more sports figures feel speaking publicly about their teams is not part of the job description. Sixers GM Sam Hinkie is rarely available. The new power broker of the Phillies, part owner John Middleton, refuses to speak. Roseman himself has not said a word publicly since his demotion. And now Kelly has stopped talking.

There’s more to being a fan than watching the games and cheering for your team. In this age of social media, following the daily soap opera has emerged as an integral part of the sports experience. When people making huge salaries like Kelly refuse to speak, they are snubbing the very people who make possible their prosperous lives.

Chip Kelly needs to start talking to the fans, right now. In the fickle world of Philadelphia sports, his silence is not just deafening; it’s dangerous.

And finally . . .

•    The Kimmo Timonen story unfolding on the Flyers right now is inspiring and frightening at the same time. The veteran defenseman is determined, at 39, to play again despite blood-clot issues that threaten his health. Even today, in the money-mad sports world, some athletes just love to play the game.

•    Herb Magee won his 1,000th game last weekend at Philadelphia University, in his 48th season as head coach there. The man is 73, he still dances up and down the sideline, and he is already in the Basketball Hall of Fame. After the milestone win, the 73-year-old coach told reporters: “See you in a few years, fella.” Wow.

•    Tra Thomas, the ex-Eagle who was let go last week from the team’s coaching staff, said first-round bust Marcus Smith has the body “of a high-school athlete.” Two questions: Then why did the Eagles draft him, and why hasn’t Smith built himself up in the ten months since then?

•    If the Phillies really want to impress their fans, they will win the bidding war for 19-year-old Cuban free-agent Yoan Moncada, a five-tool stud who will be ready to play second base right around the time Chase Utley retires. The Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox are all interested. The Phils need to outbid them all.

•    Ever since he announced that he is available “almost every day,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has rejected all interview requests, including one by Fox29’s Howard Eskin. There’s no chance the commissioner was lying, is there?