Sunday, February 15, 2009

Phoenix Suns Were Wrong to Hire Terry Porter; Even More Wrong to Fire Him


The Phoenix Suns may or may not have fired head coach Terry Porter. Because the NBA doesn't want anyone dumping on the All Star Game, league business tends to take the weekend off.

So, tomorrow, Porter will be fired by the Suns. Thanks for that! The Suns have absolutely no stones. None.

Don't get me wrong: Porter isn't a great head coach. He's a good guy who does a good job and all, but he just doesn't enough produce wins. I'm not saying this now that he's gone ... I was saying that when he was hired.

Porter never should have been head coach of the Suns. But GM Steve Kerr was busy running Mike D'Antoni out of town and into a gazillion dollar offer from the Knicks. He wanted a defensive minded guy, so hiring Porter seemed like a good idea.

The problem is that Porter wasn't inheriting a defensive minded team. Phoenix has long been a run-and-gun team that hid their bad defense by outscoring opponents. That usually isn't a trademark of championship teams, but Porter was supposed to add that defensive dimension to go with that potent offense.

Problem was two things: The potent offense left with D'Antoni and Kerr deals away Porter's only stallions. And by stallions, I mean he traded away the two guys Porter had to have to push his defensive stance: Raja Bell and Boris Diaw. Those were the Suns two best defensive and most versatile players. Kerr dealt them to Charlotte for Jason Richardson ... who would have thrived in that run-and-gun style of D'Antoni's.

That doesn't even mention the square peg of Shaq anchoring the rounded Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire.

Porter inherited all of this and was asked to create ... what? What was the goal? What was the standard? Yes, being the 9th place team in the Western Conference is a problem, but what did you expect when you didn't let the man coach his team. Even if he was going to stink at it, let him do his job.

If not, then why did you hire him in the first place?

Porter will probably never be a head coach again unless he takes an interim role when a coach he is assisting is fired (like Alvin Gentry, who will be replacing Porter in Phoenix).

Meanwhile, Kerr marches on to make more bad decisions.

1 comment:

John B said...

It's amazing how many bad decisions that franchise has made. You can start back when they gave away Luol Deng. Then there's letting Joe Johnson walk. How about giving away Rondo and giving Marcus Banks a ridiculous deal? Wouldn't it be nice to have Johnson and Rondo now so they could cut down on Nash's regular season minutes? There's the Rudy Fernandez giveaway. Then Shaq for Marion and inexplicably dumping D'Antoni.

That team should be contending for the next decade, but once they give away Amare, they could be a lottery team for the next five years.