It's taken eight years to get past that first-round barrier again, to taste the sweet narcotic of title-contending pressure, to finally believe he is on his way to the rarified place he'd visited so long ago. So eight minutes is not nearly enough. For all of Terry Porter's team-first-and-last 'tude, leaving the floor is never easy, even after nearly 40,000 minutes logged. So when he sees Avery Johnson coming for him near the end of the first quarter of Game 1 against the Mavs in the Western Conference semifinals, it doesn't matter that this is the usual rotation, or that he'd still be running the show most of the night.

For most people, pressure makes the world spin faster, the noises harsher and the lights brighter. For TP, it slows everything down, brings it into focus, creating an oasis, not a cauldron. "It almost has a calming effect," he says. "It's what I live for." After 16 seasons, sidestepping a potentially career-derailing ankle injury and the monumental tease of 11 first-round playoff exits, TP is finally back in his element, where it doesn't matter if you weren't the best player on your high school team or went to an NAIA school or haven't dunked in nearly a decade. The only question is whether you can think with a delirious crowd screaming in your ears, breathe with an entire franchise's hopes hanging from your neck, shoot with defenders younger and bigger and quicker flying at you.

It's a question TP loves to answer, hopes to answer with the whole world watching just one more time, to validate a lifetime's work. But it can't be done like this, sitting on the bench with the Spurs holding a shaky four-point lead. As AJ approaches, Porter's face falls the way a just-released prisoner's would with a policeman walking toward him. He stands under the Mavs' basket for a good minute before finally trudging to the bench, not looking at Avery or coach Gregg Popovich before sitting down and draping a towel over his head. "It was Game 1, you want to set the tone," he says afterward.

"Terry," says Susie Porter, the woman who has been with him every arduous step, "has always been that way."

***

They don't keep track of the best shooters as the 24-second clock bleats; if they did, maybe Porter's cool-hand cred inside the league would be universally recognized. "Second-best clutch player I ever played with," says former Blazers teammate Danny Ainge. "And the only reason he's second is that Larry Bird is 6'9"."

Every former coach -- Pat Riley, Flip Saunders, Rick Adelman -- mourns Porter's absence, even with his having reached the cracked-leather age of 38. Popovich coveted him for years. His original teammates in Portland nicknamed him Huevos Grandes. "You could never trust rookies with the ball at the end of games," says former teammate and Mavs assistant coach Kiki Vandeweghe. "But Terry you could, right from the start. You knew something good would happen. You gave him an inch, a crack, an angle, he'd find it and take advantage of it."

Huevos Grandes stuck with him in Minnesota. In Miami he was The Vet. They call him Victim Maker now in San Antonio. "That's what we yell when he takes a shot," says Tim Duncan, "because he's about to make another victim." The Spurs knew all about his rep when he joined them for the '99-00 season. He earned instant respect from his new teammates in the McDonald's Classic, the four-team exhibition in Europe that featured the then-defending champs. Irritated that San Antonio was getting razzed by the Euro crowd, Porter knocked down a series of crowd-quieting jumpers. The Spurs had come to expect such pluck when he dropped a buzzer-beating three-pointer in Charlotte last season for a 72-70 win. More recently, he knocked down the back-breaking jumper in their first-round Game 1 win over the T-Wolves. "I'd seen him hit a lot of last-minute shots before he got here, but I never knew how much he relishes those situations," says David Robinson. "He's as clutch as they come."

By and large, though, his buckets are rarely highlight-reel material, which may be another reason his knack for last-second heroics has been underappreciated. He's king of the midgame momentum-turning shot, like the 12-foot shot-clock beater that gave the Spurs the lead for good in Game 2 against Dallas, or the 22-footer he later canned with one second on the shot clock to snuff a Mavs' fourth-quarter rally. The repertoire includes a hard dribble and pull-up jumper from just about anywhere, the lightning-release three, the calm left-handed layup off the glass. He's added a pump-fake and leaning bank shot as a concession to age, since he's no longer always able to get to the hoop.

And if it appears he has a clock in his head, it's because he and Adelman, then a Blazers assistant, spent Porter's first few summers in the league doing shooting drills that included a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown. Porter innately knows how much time each pump fake, jab step and dribble burns, how long each combination takes, and what he needs left to load, cock and release. Adelman calls him his all-time favorite player, partly because he knows how far TP had to come from being a 6'3" small forward at NAIA Wisconsin-Stevens Point to an NBA All-Star point guard. "The most mentally tough person I've ever seen," Adelman says.

The first-class scowl, shaved head and scars on his right shoulder and biceps fit the tough-guy motif, but it's a facade. The scars are burn marks from a pot of boiling water investigation as a 3-year-old. He keeps his dome clean because he grows about as much hair as Garry St. Jean and would look reeeeeeallly old with sidewalls.

As for the scowl ... "I was amazed at what a nice guy he is, because I always assumed he was nasty by the way he looked," says Spurs teammate Steve Kerr. The scowl is inherited from his late dad, Herman; the two of them lived together after Terry's parents split when he was in fifth grade. "His dad was an imposing, mean-looking figure," says Elbert Owens, TP's closest high school buddy and now a Milwaukee factory worker. The youngest of six -- he's eight years younger than his next sibling -- Terry was often on his own, and as a result, was mature beyond his years.

Hours before he had to catch a team plane to Dallas, Porter juggled a photo shoot, an interview, a thunderstorm that momentarily knocked out the power in his house, and the clamor of his two sons, 3-year-old Malcolm and 5-year-old Franklin. All this while Susie was on a trip to London. "When anything happens, you want him around," says Susie. "He's my rock in this world."

He is far more blue-collar Milwaukee than NBA bling-bling. He credits UW-Stevens Point coach Dick Bennett for teaching him the game, but it was TP's steady hand that balanced Bennett's sideline histrionics. He met Susie in the school library in '82 and, except for a one-month interlude, they've been together ever since and married for 10 years. Off the court, the times he had a bit too much to drink can be counted on one hand. His carport is filled with more toys than cars, and his biggest hobby is collecting watches, appropriate for someone who is fanatical about routine.

Game days begin with taking the kids (he also has a 10-year-old daughter, Brianna) to school and then going out for breakfast, the place and fare depending on whether or not the Spurs won the last time he went there. Then there's an hour in his office watching video, answering mail and returning calls before napping from 1 until 4. Then he showers and downs one of Susie's pasta dinners before heading to the Alamodome by 5. The huevos are housed in a one-of-a-kind black silk jock that TP calls his Black Jack and his teammates laughingly refer to as either a garter or a G-string. A cup of coffee laced with Swiss Miss hot-chocolate mix, a precise pregame shooting drill, and the Victim Maker is primed.

Duncan believes Porter is comfortable taking big shots because he's willing to accept whatever happens. "He doesn't fear the consequences," Duncan says. "Some people can take the glory but not the criticism or disappointment. He's been doing it for too many years to give a darn."

If opponents still leave him open now and then, blame his modest size and athleticism for the oversight. A stocky, 6'3" 'tweener guard his entire career, he vaguely recalls last dunking nine years ago in Portland, and even then he was merely dipping it doughnut-style. But simply playing is not enough. Whether it's coming from a small school or being overlooked all these years, Porter won't be satisfied until he proves his mettle under the biggest microscope -- the Finals. "I knew he wanted a championship, but he craves it more than I ever thought," Johnson says. "David wanted one, but if he'd never got it, his life would've been just fine. Not Terry. He needs one to make his life complete."

Porter can't remember any of his big shots beyond two years ago, but the misses throughout the years stand like granite tombstones in his gray matter. Especially one. "Game 6," says Adelman. "In L.A.," says Mavs forward Mark Bryant, a teammate then. That would be Game 6 of the '91 Western Conference finals, Blazers vs. Lakers, four seconds left. Porter can instantly describe precisely where Clyde Drexler, Kevin Duckworth, Jerome Kersey and Buck Williams were on the floor with him. "We ran a play called Two-Out," Porter says. "I made a cut off Duck, and then Jerome and Buck had a double pin-down on the baseline for me. Clyde threw me the ball. I came off wide open and missed the shot." Lakers 91, Blazers 90.

It doesn't matter to him that he'd helped the Blazers reach the Finals the season before, and that he did it again the next season, too. As TP sees it, '91 was The Year -- Portland had swept the season series from eventual champ Chicago -- and, for once, he was not The Man. "If it ever comes around again," he says, "I'm not going to miss."

He nearly gave up the dream when an ankle injury prompted Portland to release him after the '94-95 season. No contender had room for him, so he accepted a deal with the T-Wolves, which put him closer to Milwaukee. Three straight 82-game seasons removed any doubt about the ankle. Miami called, offering more money and a longer playoff run, and the Heat were trumped a year later by the Spurs. When Duncan missed the playoffs last season, another year passed and Porter's window dropped another inch closer to the sill.

So forgive his impatience now. By the time he returns to Game 1 against the Mavs, the Spurs have doubled their lead and won't be threatened again. Porter logs 23 minutes in the 94-78 win, taking only three shots. "Not his game," says Bryant afterward. "He was taking care of everybody else. When he needs to step up, you'll see it."

Sure enough, with the Spurs needing to show in Game 2 that the loss of Derek Anderson wouldn't slow them down, Porter will get busy with a shot-clock-beating J here and a couple of back-breaking 3's there, to compile 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting and nine assists with only two turnovers. After directing a 26-16 third-quarter run with a trey and six assists in nine minutes, he'll high-five AJ before handing over the reins.

Circumstances are actually conspiring to make his role almost as big as it was a decade ago. A midseason injury to Johnson after a 25-14 Spurs start got Porter into the starting lineup, and a subsequent 34-9 run kept him there. Anderson's potentially season-ending shoulder separation -- courtesy of the Mavs' Juwan Howard -- ups the chances the Spurs will look to Porter to launch one of his silky jumpers as the final horn blares and the rest of the world holds its breathe.

So imagine his getting the chance against L.A., the team he so idolized that his college dorm room was a purple-and-gold shrine, complete with a Lakers wastebasket and every wall obscured by team and player posters. The team against whom his "clutch" shot front-rimmed 10 years ago.

"Some guys can finish their career without a championship," TP says. "Not me. I need it. For myself. For all I've put into it." A pressure gauge in the room surely would've red-lined, if not simply exploded. But clutch players don't set the bar that high without knowing they can reach it.

Maybe that's why Porter is smiling.

This article appears in the May 28 issue of ESPN The Magazine.