He is my favorite player ever, and an amazing man.
Should he coach the Blazers? Hmm... Only if those who know best are convinced he's a better coach than Marc Iavaroni and/or Nate McMillan. I'm not sure he is. I'd much rather have a great coach for a decade who will bring us a championship than a local favorite who will be replaced in two years.
Not that I know who that is. I just know this team needs success more than PR band-aids.
If you can convince me Terry Porter is the best guy for the job, fine. But what happened in Milwaukee, while not unimpressive, did not knock my socks off. (And I have a hunch that if Terry Porter had his choice between Rick Adelman and Terry Porter, he'd take Adelman.)
Just for fun, and so you Blazer fans believe that I "get" Terry Porter, here's an article I wrote for HOOP when TP was hired as an assistant coach in Sacramento a few years ago:Unfinished Business
New Sacramento Assistant Coach Terry Porter has One More Dream to Fulfill
By Henry Abbott
All season long, people in Sacramento have been getting that feeling. Is this, could this possibly, finally, really be our year to win a championship? Sit in the stands, peek in the lockerroom, have a chat in the front office wherever you look in California's capital, the excitement is smeared thick like frosting on a cake.
If the boys in purple do go all the way this year, the icing on the cake for me will be to see a long overdue ring on the finger of Sacramento assistant Terry Porter. If you'll let me suspend my journalistic impartiality for a moment, I'll explain why:
In June of 1985, growing up in Portland, Oregon, I watched my beloved Blazers do something very odd. They drafted an unknown forward from an unknown college, while announcing their intentions to make him play the most demanding position of all point guard. Surely it was one of the great optimistic moves in sports history.
Terry Porter was quiet and hard-working. He had a degree in communications from the University of Wisconsin's lesser-known Steven's Point campus, to go with an appealing lack of flash. Calling himself "a Midwestern boy" and meaning it, he didn't even have a driver's license until he was drafted. Even now, after close to two decades of shuttling between Four Seasons and Ritz-Carltons in private jets, he's as down to earth as a farmer he still remembers with fondness the job he once had selling farm equipment.
There was a nasty-looking scar on one arm, which added a bit of mystery, especially because it was never talked about. The mystique evaporates quickly though, when he admits now that it's not from a back alley brawl or a relationship gone wrong it's from cooking. He says he got it as a toddler, being a "Curious George in the kitchen" by investigating a hot pot on the stovetop. He's still a little shy around stoves.
Anyway, the unusual draft pick worked out. Before long, the 6-3 player really was a point guard, with tremendous promise. Always a good defender, he soon learned to run an offense like a pro. "I was never jet-quick" he admits, so he made himself a shooter, spending such long hours in the gym learning to shoot all over again that he became good friends with then Portland assistant coach Rick Adelman, who is now his boss in Sacramento.
Things started looking up. Buck Williams arrived from New Jersey to add yeoman-like toughness to the All-Star backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter. Jerome Kersey and Kevin Duckworth were reaching their primes. After some coaching shuffles, the assistant Adelman became the coach and he let those gifted players run like deer. The team excelled and Blazermania was spreading again. "I still feel an unbelievable connection to that city," says Porter. "The organization trusted me and the city embraced me, even though at first the Blazer fans didn't know anything about me."
By 1990, the Blazers had established an identity, and were in a run that would take them to the NBA Finals. One of those playoff games happened to fall on the day of my high school graduation Blazermania had spread so much that the event was punctuated with regular score updates.
Those games were a thrill, largely thanks to Porter, whom teammate Danny Ainge called the most clutch player in the League. Porter put up some incredible numbers for five years he averaged close to 18 points and eight assists, and he made the NBA All-Star Game twice but people around the League came to know him for taking and making big shots from all over the court.
It was especially impressive coming from a player who had come into the League with only mid-range shooting ability. Porter says Adelman and some other assistants basically reinventing his shot in his rookie year, "trying to develop length and consistency." It worked.
Adelman also designed a special play that the team saved just for crunch time, called "2-out." It started with the 6-7 Drexler coming off a Duckworth pick with a world of options. Two favorites were to head straight for the hoop or to find Duckworth rolling to a spot on the baseline where he was deadly. Porter, meanwhile, would weave through a forest of forwards on the weak side, looking to shed his man. "Jerome Kersey and Buck Williams did such a great job setting picks, that I was open on that play a lot," remembers Porter. With the clock winding down, Drexler would often hit Porter with a pass for a wide-open shot.
It was a good play, and a good team, and they almost had enough to beat the Bad Boys of Detroit in the 1990 NBA Finals. The night the Blazers lost the series in Portland, I headed downtown to catch a movie with some friends. From the back of the car, I spied a handful of Detroit fans gathered outside a swanky hotel, and I can still remember the twist in my stomach when I looked up to see Detroit Center James Edwards leaning out the window making an enormous victory sign with his outstretched arms.
The next season, the Blazers rolled earning a 63-19 record. A quarter of the Western All-Stars were Blazers, including Porter. The only other team to win 60, Michael Jordan's emerging Bulls, didn't beat Portland all year.
More than a few of those Blazer wins came courtesy of the 2-out play. It worked to perfection in the final minute of a win over Seattle in January, when Porter nailed an open shot. A few months later, in May, he took a pass from Drexler on the same play and made a layup with three seconds left to secure a two-point win in Utah.
By the time the playoffs rolled around, the City of Roses was electric with excitement. Old-timers were talking non-stop about how similar it was to the magical summer of 1977, when Jack Ramsay, Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas, Lionel Hollins, Bobby Gross and the rest of the Blazers beat Philadelphia to bring the city its only title. The city was getting spoiled a second-time with a Finals-quality team made of genuinely nice guys who treated each other like family.
In the bank, at the grocery store, in restaurants wherever you went, complete strangers yapped happily about Clyde, Terry, Buck, Jerome, Duck and Danny like they were friends. Porter says the Blazers even saw it that way. "The team and the city at that time was very supportive. There was a great bond and family atmosphere. There was just incredible trust. They really supported us."
Indeed. By April, Blazer logos were on car antennas, bridges, skyscrapers, even foreheads. About that time, my father got out of a speeding ticket by telling the officer the Blazer game on the radio had been so exciting he had lost all ability to focus on the speedometer. The way my dad tells it, the cop said he understood completely, quickly forgave the offense, and rushed back to his car to hear the rest of the game.
Seattle and Utah failed miserably as they tried to stop Portland in the first two rounds of the playoffs, setting up a date with Magic Johnson's Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. Always the Blazers' nemesis, the Lakers had finished five games back. However it happened I know a lot of people in Portland ended up with a bitter feeling about referees Portland found itself down three games to two playing Game 6 in Los Angeles.
To make matters worse, in the closing minutes, L.A. had a nine point lead.
That's when Portland's team defense started putting on a clinic. By the final minute of the game, the Blazers had trimmed the lead to one, when Cliff Robinson picked off Magic's pass, touching off a four-on-one fast break. In sports bars and living rooms across Oregon fans leapt to their feet, knowing this was the kind of play these Blazers just didn't bungle. Sure enough, a couple of crisp passes later, Robinson had a wide-open layup but booted the ball out of bounds. Unfortunately for Robinson, who continues to be a remarkable player in Detroit, it's a famous moment among Portland fans.
The Lakers were determined to run some time off the clock, but they ran a little too much, and Portland's defense forced a 24-second violation. That set up the kind of moment you have to love no matter who you root for: nine seconds left, no timeouts left, down one.
If ever there were a time for the 2-out play, this was it.
They ran it perfectly. Drexler had good patience in letting the play develop, waiting for Porter to approach the double-screen before starting his drive by Duckworth. The Lakers mobbed the perennial All-Star Drexler, preventing the drive, so he coolly found Porter wide open for a 17-foot shot. It was exactly what the Blazers wanted, and those same people all over Oregon leapt once again from their seats, just knowing this team had escaped again.
Or not. Somehow, Porter missed it. The Lakers won.
"I always think about that shot," remembers Porter, who sounds seriously wistful about it more than a decade later. "It was just a tad bit high." He is silent for several seconds, living it yet again. "That was the year that a lot of the guys on the team really thought we could make it. I tell guys all the time that I would love to have that shot over again."
The Blazers did make it to the NBA Finals again in '92, but they happened to catch Michael Jordan on one of the hottest shooting streaks of his career, and the Bulls won their second title in a row. Eventually, the Blazers team was broken up. Porter became a Timberwolf in '95. Calling him "an amazing teammate on and off the court," Kevin Garnett still laments Porter's departure for a season in Miami in '98-99. He finished with three strong years in San Antonio.
Through all the teams, Terry Porter always made major contributions as a starter or off the bench, and his team only failed to make the playoffs once, (when Minnesota was brand-new). His reputation as a clutch performer never dimmed as he kept hitting big shots. Coaches wanted him around, and he took impeccable care of his body, so his career stretched out 15, 16, and finally 17 years. "My ability to hit big shots definitely kept me around a lot longer," he says of his incredible longevity. "Part of it's in my genes, and I didn't abuse my body. But when it comes down to it, it was just luck. An injury could have ended my career at any time, and it was just a freak thing that it never happened."
Now he brings those qualities like durability, intelligence, hard work, friendliness, guts, and a commitment to charity work to his new job with the Kings. It's a job he loves already. "It's a lot more work than being a player, I'll tell you that," he admits. "But I know this system, and Rick and I have a great relationship, so I don't know if I'll ever leave" he says. With the help of Chris Webber, Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic, Bobby Jackson and the rest of the Kings, it might also be a chance for him to finally get the one thing he's still missing: an NBA Championship ring.