The Terry Porter Deathwatch Ends

After months of speculation, Terry Porter is out as the coach of the Phoenix Suns. One of the most concise explanations of what happened is this:

Porter has been unable to display the confidence needed to earn the trust of his players and, in retrospect, may have never had the experience and reputation to be successful in this environment.

It became apparent pretty quickly that Porter wasn't going to be as successful as the Suns had hoped. There were a couple of reasons for this:

1. The Suns players wanted someone else as their coach. When a 2-time MVP, Amare Stoudamire and Shaq all want Alvin Gentry to be their coach and you not only don't hire Alvin Gentry as the coach, but keep him on as an assistant their is going to be some internal conflict
2. Porter was hired for the wrong reasons. Here is what Steve Kerr said about Porter after the hire was made:
   

   "Well I know that people who followed Terry in Portland over the years know exactly why I picked him as our coach.
   
   He's just an incredibly class human being, first of all. A great guy.
   
   Somebody who I was teammates with in San Antonio for two seasons. So I got to know Terry very well.
   
   Once everything went down with Mike D'Antoni, and my search began, Terry was the first guy on my list just because of his experience in basketball and the type of person he is. How smart he is. What kind of leader he is.
   
   I felt like we got the best man for the job. I really liked the fact that he had a couple of years as a head coach in Milwaukee for experience purposes.
   
   You ask around the league about Terry and everybody raves about him. He's just the kind of person I want on my team. And I'm excited to have him."

   
   To sum up, Porter was hired basically because Kerr thinks that he is a nice guy. While Kerr may disagree with this, as his current job seems to be predicated largely on his own friendship with the owner, but hiring someone based solely on him being your friend and being a great guy probably isn't the best qualifications for a head coach in the NBA.
3. Porter may not be a very good head coach. Kerr mentioned Porters head coaching experience being a plus in the hiring search, but Porter had an undistinguished coaching record up to that point. Granted part of that may have been due to the roster he was given. But so much of coaching success in the NBA is getting the players to buy into what you are trying to get them to do, and coaching the Bucks for 2 seasons to a 71-93 record isn't going to invoke a lot of confidence.

Part of this situation has to be attributed to the owner Robert Sarver. After giving his vacant GM position to one of his buddies who had no previous front office experience in the NBA and then firing one of the most successful coaches in the NBA, it seems that Sarver hasn't been able to create an environment that will be able to win consistently. I big portion of this is due to his willingness to give positions to people who have not shown the ability to handle the demands of the position. If you decide to hire someone to groom for the position as the Rockets did with Daryl Morey it is one thing, but to hire someone with no experience and expect him to succeed from day 1 is foolish. As long as the Suns continue to operate in the same manner as they have in the reign of Sarver, they can continue to expect medium to poor results.