She still feels the handshake.
“I was in fifth grade, and if you’ve met Mr. Porter, you know his handshake is very stern,” said Megan (Coffey) Parker, 27, who annually attended Lonnie Porter’s summer educational academy. “From the start, he demanded respect, but at the same time, you felt like you were in the presence of a leader.
“I never wanted to let him down.”
When she considered quitting swimming while in high school, because her coaches didn’t understand her asthma issues, Porter wrote her a letter of inspiration so she would stick with the sport.
When she was the first person in her family to go to college, Porter’s academy helped pay her way through Regis University.
When she teaches her fourth-grade class, she strives to make an impact on the lives of impressionable students, as an homage to Porter.
And when her mother died, just a month after being diagnosed with cancer, there he was, at the funeral.
“I knew my whole life that he cared for me and supported me,” she said. “But it was at that moment, to have him there, that’s when he became more than a leader and a role model. He became part of my family.”
Here’s the thing: There are hundreds of Megans out there, touched and inspired by this man who sees promise in the underprivileged kids of Denver.
Oh, and by the way, he’s also a legendary basketball coach.
Porter, 71, has 538 career wins at Division II Regis, more victories than any other men’s hoops coach in state history. He started at Regis in 1977, just a year after Chauncey Billups was born.
“He’s won a lot of basketball games, and is obviously a fantastic coach, but his legacy is the children,” said the 2004 NBA Finals MVP, who joined forces with the coach’s academy, which is now called the . “Every life that he changed, and every kid that went to college and changed the trajectory of their life, it all has to do with L.P.’s vision. And he has changed so, so, so many lives. So many families’ lives.”
This is a story of one man — a “man’s man,” as Billups calls him. And it’s a story about his legacy — molding men and women through basketball, the classroom and, many times, both.
This season is Porter’s 38th and last at Regis. He’s retiring as a coach. But not from his academy. As Tara Moberly of the Regis communications department said, he’ll run the Porter-Billups Leadership Academy “until the end of time.”
Playing pickup ball with Oscar
He still feels the ball.
Sixty-five Christmases ago, the little boy opened his gift and with it opened possibilities.
“It’s what we called a ‘balloon,’ ” Porter said, reminiscing in his office last week, the sound of basketballs bouncing on Regis’ hardwood outside his opened door. “It was a cheap basketball, it had laces on it, and it wasn’t made of leather — I don’t know what that thing was made of. You try to bounce it and it wouldn’t bounce right. But that’s all my parents could afford.
“It’s cold as heck, you take it outside, and I can remember shooting hoops in crates. We didn’t have a goal, but we had coal sheds. We’d go outside and play, one hand in your pocket, one hand dribbling.”
Born in Mississippi, Porter and his family moved to Indianapolis when he was 5. That stuff they say about basketball being a religion in Indiana, it’s not neatly manipulated for movie scripts. It’s real, Porter explained, an experience. He gravitated to the sport, fell hard for it, like a first crush.
He remembers those preposterously frost-biting winter nights and those abhorrently hot summer days on the court. Porter played in Lockfield Gardens. The projects. The younger players held court on the court midday, when the heat was unbearable, and the older kids took over later in the afternoon.
“I’m 11, and I hung around for the big guys to play,” Porter said. “I called, ‘I got next!’ And someone said, ‘Little man, the big boys are playing now.’ And I said, ‘I’ve been out here all day! I’ve got the next game!’ Finally, they said OK. “So I’m trying to pick my team, and I see this guy walking through Lockfield. He has this slow walk, this swagger. And I said, ‘Oscar, you want to play with me next?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll play.’ “
Oscar Robertson.
“We (kept winning and) held the court until it got dark,” Porter said with a smile. “And I took one shot. All I was doing was hustling and passing him the ball.”
In high school, though, Porter sat out his freshman basketball season to help raise his brother while their parents worked blue-collar jobs. Sophomore year, Porter didn’t make the team. He occasionally got in trouble, joking about a permanent seat waiting for him in the principal’s office. As an upperclassman, he moved away from home to live with an uncle and aunt in Waterloo, Iowa.
Porter’s second love was Colorado. From the first time he saw our state. He played college ball at Adams State, then coached at Manual High, before heading to the University of Nebraska to be an assistant coach for five seasons.
He came back to Denver in 1977, and Denver had no idea what it was getting.
A museum of hoops history
He still feels the presence.
Now, it’s Billups who creates a presence when he saunters into a room, but at age 6, when Chauncey was introduced by his dad to Porter, “It was like he was this 10-foot action figure.”
Coach Porter has this way about him. He’s towering, even to men his own height. He dresses just so. He can motivate. He can intimidate. He wins, a lot. He describes himself as “the big bad wolf” on the sideline and “a big teddy bear” away from the court.
Five times Porter won conference coach of the year honors. And he is in so many halls of fame, he doesn’t even remember them all — though he jokes that’s a sign of old age. For the record, he is in seven halls of fame, ranging from his high school’s to the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.
Porter’s office at Regis, which he calls his sanctuary, might as well charge admission as a museum of hoops history. One doesn’t even realize what color the walls are because they’re covered in framed photos and articles and memorabilia of a lifetime spent coaching. He occasionally loses himself in the old photos, wondering what, say, “Flow” is up to these days.
“Most of them, I know what they’re doing,” Porter said of his former players. “Regis has helped me change so many lives. We believe in graduating players. When I was coming up, a lot of kids didn’t graduate from college, and coaches kind of used them. I think about some of the problems some of the kids had — and what they’re doing now. A lot of my players didn’t like me being tough on them. I can remember my dad, he was tougher than nails, and I never understood it until I was about 25. I said, ‘Daddy, why were you so tough on me when I was a kid?’ And he said, ‘Because I didn’t want you to turn out like the rest of the boys.’ “
Nineteen years ago this May, Porter married Sunny. That’s the nickname he gave his wife, Beverly, “because she’s so bright and cheerful. One of our friends, Norm Early, tells a funny story. Back then he said, ‘Man, I thought Lonnie was dating Beverly, and then someone said he married a woman named Sunny!’ “
Porter has a daughter, Staci, and she has two children. When asked whether they live in Denver, Porter scoffed at the notion that his family would be in any other city.
“They’re not going anywhere,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever let them go!”
This basketball season, like the others, will fade away. But the impact of the season will be forever remembered in a framed photo on Porter’s office wall, or, say, a diploma on a point guard’s office wall.
Then summer will start, and the Porter-Billups Leadership Academy will open its doors and with it, open possibilities.
“This is what I’m supposed to do — help kids,” Porter said. “You can make an impression at a tender age. We make it enjoyable. We have 150 kids each summer, and (many) are in universities.”
Porter said the academy will pay for a student to attend Regis, but joked that “with some, we did too good of a job,” and made reference to a student now attending pricey Georgetown University.
“I take pride in kids who have had it tough in life,” Porter said. “I help mold them with their attitudes — the way you play the game of basketball is the way you’re going to live your life.”
The way Porter cares about basketball is the way he cares about life — really, the lives of others.
“He’s an icon in this city, he really is,” Billups said. “And the thing I admire most about him is, he’s just a man’s man. Whatever he’s feeling, you’re going to know. He’s going to shoot straight from the hip. And he’s just as loving as any being can be. A man’s man. And that is what all of us aspire to be — I know I do.”
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
