Terry Porter: Finding The Best Situation

"I had never shot the ball from distance before getting to the NBA," he said. "Rick Adelman was an assistant coach with the Blazers when I came and I spent so many days with him in the summer at the Tigard High School gym, shooting three-pointers. I was lucky I had a coach willing to put his time in all summer."

Bucky Buckwalter, the man who scouted Porter for the late Stu Inman, general manager of the Trail Blazers at the time, remembers watching Porter play in Hawaii in a college all-star series.

"He was so strong and tough," Buckwalter said. "So competitive. He could go out and guard guys and keep them in front of him. You've got to have a guy who can contain the ball at the point -- that's where your defense starts.

"We knew he played center and forward in college, but we also knew our coaches were more willing to play guys if they would go out and guard somebody. Terry would do that. We knew he could defend but then his offense just sort of came around."

Teammates rave about Porter's ability to get the ball to them at just the right spots, particularly in the wide-open game the team would play after Adelman became its head coach.

"I think his strength was that he knew the balance of when to get players the ball in transition and flow of the offense and when the team needed him to score," said Jim Paxson, another outstanding Trail Blazer guard and teammate. "And then he became a very proficient three-point shooter."

Yes, proficient enough to once make seven out of seven three-pointers in a single game -- still a team record. He was really something of a combo guard before the term was in general use. He could set up a play for you, or finish a play for you. And playing alongside Clyde Drexler, there were never going to be the big assist numbers of some of his peers, because Drexler was a great passer, too.

"He'll never have the statistics of a Kevin Johnson or a John Stockton," Adelman wrote in his 1992 book, "The Long, Hot Winter." "Those guys don't have a guy like Clyde Drexler playing in the backcourt with them. That takes away from Terry's stats because he doesn't have the ball in his hands all the time like those guys do. We like Clyde to have the ball a lot.

"But whenever we need Terry, he's there."

Like McMillan, Porter would go on to become an NBA coach and two nights after the retirement of his number in the Rose Garden, he will be on the court leading the Phoenix Suns. It doesn't surprise anyone it's turned out that way.

"He was preparing to be a coach long before he stopped playing," Ramsay said. "I was doing TV for Miami in 1998-99 when he was with the Heat. After a game we'd be on the team plane and he'd have his computer out making notes about the game and things Pat Riley did -- and it was like an analysis of the game, both playing and coaching.

"Not many guys did anything like that."

And not many players follow the difficult path from virtual anonymity to having his uniform number retired by his first NBA team, either.

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