The sting subsides, the itch intensifies and sooner or later, the sensations cross like arrows on some financial guru's graph. From that point forward, for so many NBA coaches who have been through this particular career cycle, the trauma of getting fired gives way to the excitement of getting hired, with an opportunity to resume or improve upon tactics and philosophies that were so abruptly interrupted.
The You're fired! You're hired! rollercoaster is part of the bargain for coaches. Some, like Los Angeles Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro, want and are able to get back on right away, going from the postseason with one team to preseason prep with another in one swift summer. Others, like Philadelphia's Doug Collins, go six years (Chicago to Detroit) between rides. Or seven (Washington to the 76ers).
Terry Porter is somewhere in between right now. His arrows only recently crossed. It's been 19 months since the Phoenix Suns fired him in February 2009, using him as fall guy in a season gone sideways. He had been hired the previous June to bring defense and discipline to Phoenix, only to get stuck and spit out in what became the dyspeptic Steve Kerr-Shaquille O'Neal era of Suns basketball.
Most of those involved have moved on from that relative hiccup -- Kerr back to TV, O'Neal to Cleveland and now Boston, the Suns back to their entertaining, no-starch ways -- but Porter has not. Not yet. He wants back in, interviewing for an assistant coaching job with two NBA teams this offseason. But when training camps open this week and next, he'll be watching his sons Franklin and Malcolm play football on school fields outside Portland.
"I was trying to get back in it and I had talked to a couple of different people, went through the process with a couple of teams," Porter said in a telephone interview Monday, "but it just didn't work out."............
