Terry Porter Out in Phoenix, Assistant Alvin Gentry Promoted

We all know the news by now that Terry Porter was relieved of his head coaching duties in Phoenix. With Steve Nash’s career undeniably winding down, and Shaquille O’Neal seemingly healthy enough to contribute bigtime minutes and numbers come playoff time, Steve Kerr and the Suns ownership decided they’d seen enough of the Terry Porter experiment.

With just 30 games or so remaining in the regular season, the Suns currently reside outside of the playoffs in 9th place out West. They’re only one game behind Utah for that 8th and final spot, and just 3.5 games outside of 4th place. But the time to act was now for the Suns, as they let Porter go and promoted Alvin Gentry from his assistant role to the head coach. His promotion should mean a return to a more up tempo style of play than the system implemented by Porter. Listen to the new Suns coach on XTRA 910 Monday just hours after learning that he’d been handed the reigns to the team:

“No, they have not. I don’t really get involved in that. I’m going to coach who ever is here. Hopefully Amare’s here, but if not, then that’s something that Steve will take care of.”

And the main difference between what fans will see when his team takes the court compared to when they last did under Porter?

“The big thing is I think we will try to play a little bit more of a break necked pace.”

How will Steve Nash get more involved under the new regime?

“I think what we have to do is, he is a guy that needs the open court to play in. I think we can open the court some more without taking away from Shaq’s post up. I think we need to do that especially in transition.”

And finally, what’s his message going to be to the guys?

“That it’s time to step up our performance.”

Listen here

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