Sports Column

Porter’s heart rebounds to ‘home’

On Sports

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Aug 25, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

PORTER

Terry Porter is a Portlander again. In his heart, he never left.

The one-time Trail Blazer guard hasn’t lived here since he left via free agency in 1995, “but since I first got to Portland (in 1985), it’s always really been home for me,” says the Milwaukee, Wis., native.

On July 25, Terry, wife Susie and their three children journeyed from Phoenix to their new home in a familiar location — Dunthorpe, where the family lived in the final years of Terry’s 10-year run with the Blazers.

It has been six months since Porter, 46, was fired after just 51 games on the job as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.

The Porters considered Chicago before deciding to make Portland their permanent home.

“I’ve always talked about settling in Portland,” says Porter, a two-time All-Star during his playing days here who ranks among the top five on the club career list in more than a dozen statistical categories. “My wife loves it here. My two oldest kids (Brianna and Franklin) were born here. Portland has always been great to our family, and as a Trail Blazer, the whole town embraced us.”

Brianna, who will be a senior at Jesuit High in the fall, “had a lot of say” in the decision, Porter says. The Porters have lived a nomadic existence since Terry served a two-year stint as Milwaukee’s head coach from 2003-05 (he took the Bucks to the playoffs the first season). He spent two seasons as an assistant coach with Detroit before accepting the Phoenix job last year.

“We’ve moved about every summer for the last four or five years,” Porter says. “We need some stability in our kids’ lives. For Brianna, this is a chance to enjoy her senior year of high school. For my two boys (Franklin, 13, and Malcolm, 12), they’re starting to play sports, and I don’t want them moving from school to school.

“No matter what the career situation is going forward, Portland will always be our home base.”

It’s been that way for Rick Adelman, now the head coach of the Houston Rockets. And for Jerome Kersey, and Cliff Robinson, and Chris Dudley, and the late Kevin Duckworth. They all chose to make Portland their home during the latter part of their playing careers and beyond.

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