Little Stevie Ledesma pushes the ball up the polished hardwood of the Regis University Field House and lofts a picture-perfect alley-oop . . . if he’s playing with, say, David Thompson in his prime.
As it is, the ball flies over everybody. His coach fixes a stare on him that suggests a lightning bolt is next.
“Where was that going?” Lonnie Porter thunders, his voice reaching the top of the grandstand.
Afterward, when the Rangers have lost their first attempt to give Porter his 500th career victory, the 66-year-old coach, who has spent precisely half his life in this job, asks for the shooting stats of his three guards. Six-for-28, he’s told. Porter grimaces, as if remembering every one.
“That’s the game,” he says.
The wins come more slowly these days. So if you ask about the next one, the one that makes his record as the winningest men’s college basketball coach in Colorado history a big, round number, he looks at you incredulously, as if you haven’t been paying attention.
“I’ve lost almost 400 games,” he says. “It takes a real man to take a whooping 400 times and still keep his sanity.”
This one, loss No. 388, was to his alma mater, Adams State, where he led the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference in scoring three times and won two conference titles back in the 1960s, a lifetime ago. He has been preaching the same values ever since. They’re old-fashioned now, and he has a harder time finding kids and parents willing to listen.
“I think more than ever young people need direction, discipline and order in their life, and a lot of people are shying away from it and not being that strength for young people,” he says.
“What I mean by shying away from it is not challenging them. They’re not confronting them about stuff that they do wrong. They let them settle for giving a half-effort.”
Porter’s Regis teams won 20 or more games four times in the 1990s, going 25-5 in back- to-back seasons and winning the old Colorado Athletic Conference Tournament in 1995, shortly before it merged with the RMAC.
Lately, it has been a different story. The Rangers are 113-155 over the past 10 seasons, including 62-128 in the RMAC.
“The last nine years have not treated the old Rangers real good,” Porter admits. “It kind of gets old, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad. We were on a roll there for a while. I’ve just been very fortunate that I’ve been in a situation where I don’t have to win, although the driving force is still that I want to win, because I’m a competitor. I still have that drive.”
Competing at the NCAA’s Division II level, Regis has the luxury of counting Porter’s contributions as a leader and an educator, as well as his ledger of wins and losses. The Porter-Billups Leadership Academy, on the Regis campus each summer, was Porter’s brainchild to guarantee a college education to at-risk kids willing to commit to an ethic of discipline and hard work.
Chauncey Billups admired the effort and joined up three years ago. Now 13 years old, the academy is one of the principal ways Regis gives back to its north Denver home.
As the numbers grow on both sides of his coaching record, Porter’s real legacy, the one that matters to him, stretches across the state over multiple generations. Nearly 10 years ago, when he won his 400th game, he presented the game ball to the player who hit the winning shot, junior guard Corey LeDuff.
Porter had battled the strong-willed Montbello High School graduate for two years.
“He thought he was the gift to the world — not only to the game, to the world,” Porter said then. “So I’d discipline him very severely.”
Suddenly, his junior year, 2000-01, the kid came around.
“His attitude, it’s like it totally has changed,” Porter said at the time, as if reporting a miracle. “He’s coachable. He’s bought into the system of not ‘I’ but ‘Us,’ and he’s just a joy to be around. I look at him, and I just smile.”
Nine years later, LeDuff works for Lockheed Martin. He and his wife visited Porter and his wife, Sunny, a couple of weeks ago.
“He’s family,” Porter says.
These are his rewards now, the kids from his basketball program and the kids from his leadership academy, the college graduates, the success stories. The kids who might not have made it without his helping hand.
He’s not ignoring the numbers. He knows the stern taskmaster approach does not attract the players it once did. He can see the end of his coaching career from here.
“I know exactly when I’m going to retire,” he says. “My administration knows when I’m going to retire. My family knows. I’m not going to tell anybody else that. But I guarantee you this: I will not be Bobby Bowden or JoePa.”
Porter would like to get No. 500 out of the way so people will quit asking about it, but what drives him is what has always driven him.
“I’m still preaching the same stuff: Education, hard work, all those things will pay off,” he says. “It’s harder and harder to get through.”
Early in his career, Porter aspired to be a Division I head coach. Now he marvels at how lucky he was.
“At the Division I level, you’re moving your family around every other year,” he says. “Living in Denver, Regis University, it doesn’t get any better than this. It’s just been beautiful.”
The following night, Fort Lewis delivers loss No. 389. The Rangers’ next chance to get Porter win No. 500 comes Saturday night at Mesa State.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297, dkrieger@denverpost.com or
