I’m hearing a few things. It’s being reported that Brad Stevens has turned the Ducks down. The Butler coach has a shot at the Wake Forest job, apparently, and probably finds the ACC a better fit than the Pac-10.

I’ve also heard from a very reliable source that Terry Porter has interviewed at Oregon. I am not sure if they’re taking him seriously as a candidate, however. Porter’s status as a revered former Blazer was probably enough to make an interview possible — and don’t forget that this state now has a Rooney Rule, which interviewing Porter satisfies.

I’m still hearing what I heard originally, that former Trail Blazer, Golden State and Oklahoma City coach P.J. Carlesimo is the fallback candidate and is in line ahead of Porter because of his previous experience as the head coach at Seton Hall.  The Ducks have said they want a coach with previous experience as a college head coach.

I also heard recently that Oregon was making another run at Mark Few, who has previously turned the Ducks down.

What are the Ducks going to do? I’m not sure even they know now. If Stevens has turned them down, don’t be surprised if Carlesimo gets the job. Before that happens I would like to see the Ducks at least attempt to interview Rick Adelman.

I know, it’s a long shot he’d take the job. But this guy marches to a little different beat and I would think at this point of his life he wouldn’t mind getting back to what he considers his home state, where his grandchildren and children live and where he could provide leadership and support for his large family.

He’d be a slam dunk, better than anyone else being mentioned for this job. Many years ago, he was a junior college coach, his brother was a very successful JC coach in California and with his extensive NBA experience, I think he’d be able to recruit good players — he’d certainly be able to convince high school stars he could speed their path to the league.

The Ducks couldn’t pay him what he’s making in the NBA, but at a certain point, when you’ve made the kind of dough Adelman has made over his career, it shouldn’t be a big factor. It would come down to whether he’d like to come on home at this point of his life — and he might.

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Had an opportunity to chat with Terry Porter for quite a while yesterday and was happy to hear that he’s bought a house in a very nice suburb and is “settling” in the Portland area.

“We love it here,” he said. “This is where we want to live. I’m very happy to be back.”

Porter will make a few appearances on behalf of the Trail Blazers but isn’t expecting to do an awful lot this season.

“I just want to get settled, relax and spend time with my family,” he said.

And why not? The Suns still owe him quite a bit of money, there’s no sense of urgency on getting back into any kind of coaching grind and I think, with a daughter just a year away from graduating high school and considering some very exclusive colleges, it’s a great time for dad to be around a little more.

It speaks so much to the impact this city makes on NBA players that a guy like Porter, who has played or coached in places like Miami, San Antonio, Milwaukee and Phoenix would choose this as the place he wants to live.

And our town will be better for all the Terry Porters we can add to the wealth of good people in our area. He is first class all the way.

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There’s a rumor out there that the former Suns coach and Blazer guard is interested in the WSU job. I’m kind of surprised the Trail Blazers haven’t contacted him about coming on board as a temporary assistant coach, especially now that Maurice Lucas is out for the season.

And down the road, if Ken Bone were to get the WSU job, I’m wondering if Porter would be interested in the PSU gig.

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During that great Portland run late in the third quarter, I remembered something Rick Adelman used to say when his Blazer teams in the early 90s played a great game.

“We were really in tune,” he’d often say. “The guys were really in tune with what we wanted to do.”

That’s what I thought I saw last night. Man, there were times when Portland played together about as well as it has all season. Really solid. Some thoughts:

– Sergio Rodriguez is really stepping it up. He’s penetrating and finding people and you can’t convince me he doesn’t see the floor better than any Portland point guard. He had about three passes last night that were eye-popping and logged eight assists and just one turnover in less than 15 minutes.

– When Rudy Fernandez is on a roll like that, it’s something. I’ve said it a thousand times, but you can have all your dunkers in the world, for me the biggest excitement in basketball is when one of these pure shooters gets on a run where the basket looks bigger than the double Jacuzzi in my bedroom. I mean, that three at the end of the third quarter — was there any doubt?

– The officiating sure got better in the second half, didn’t it? Sorry, just kidding. Great to see Joey Crawford in the building for the first time this season. He’s old school but nobody controls a game the way Joey does. Alvin Gentry got banged with a technical foul so fast he didn’t know what hit him.

– You will never, ever see a game again where Greg Oden gets 1 rebound and Joel Przybilla gets 1 rebound. Ever.

– It kind of irks me to hear from so many people how much better Phoenix is now that it’s back playing a running style. What a bunch of BS. Terry Porter was right. This team can’t play that way anymore and it ought to be tightening down on defense. The Suns were giving up tons of open shots last night and that just doesn’t work. Plus, Portland nearly doubled them in fast-break points, 19-10. For the record, Porter had the Suns five games over the .500 mark. Gentry has them three over. And really, if Porter hadn’t slowed the game down early in the season, Steve Nash, Shaq and Grant Hill would all be on crutches by now from trying to play uptempo basketball.

– Portland still gave up a ton of points in the paint — 68. The Blazers aren’t where they need to be on defense yet, by any measurement. The Suns shot 50 percent from the floor.

– Forget about magic numbers. The Blazers are in. The Suns are out.

– Nobody noticed it much, but Nic Batum had another solid game. 10 points, five rebounds and three assists. I watch the kid shoot prior to the game and I can tell you, he’s going to be a very good shot-maker at some point. Right now, he’s not bringing it to the game all the time, but eventually he will.

– Oden had three terrific blocks and continues to find ways to score. Shaq’s a load, but Oden wasn’t afraid.

– Just wondering when Shav Randolph doesn’t dress down for a game like this, rather than Michael Ruffin. Randolph’s actually not bad and is bigger than Ruffin. Just wondering.

– I love how Przybilla stands up to Shaq. Love it. Man, it’s a shame two guys in the NBA can’t even stand nose to nose and tell each other what they think without drawing technical fouls. Good stuff. There’s too many hugs in basketball today and not enough of this stuff.

– Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge were every bit as good as you’d want them to be. When they shoot and rebound well, Portland’s halfway home.

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I’m sure Terry Porter has some failings as a head coach. I’m not sure, having not seen it close up, if he’s even head-coach material. Not saying he isn’t — just saying I don’t know.

But I do know an ambush when I see one. Steve Kerr — how can you look yourself in the mirror?

The general manager of the Phoenix Suns didn’t have the stomach to back Terry Porter in the face of Steve Nash’s whimpering about the team’s new style of play (which, of course, was Kerr’s vision in the first place, having added Shaq to the roster) and that undercut Porter’s position with his players. Porter was set up to fail almost from training camp onward. The Suns’ veterans are a disgruntled group because they hated to see former coach Mike D’Antoni leave. I don’t blame them — he coached a fun style of basketball and it was successful.

Kerr has that on his resume, too — pushing D’Antoni out the door. But then, when a decision was made to rein in the team’s running style a little bit, Porter was brought in to instill a defensive mindset and a halfcourt game. That’s two things Phoenix didn’t have.

But when the players cried about not getting to run and having to actually attempt to play defense, Kerr didn’t march into the locker room and shut them up. He wasn’t honest enough to tell them and the Suns’ fans the truth — they’re too old and broken down to continue that running style. Even now, when it’s obvious that Nash, not Amare Stoudemire, should be traded for the betterment of the franchise, Kerr doesn’t have the guts to do it because Nash is too popular in Phoenix.

The Suns now are officially on the road to ruin. If they make the playoffs this season it will be for the last time in a long, long while. And in Phoenix they’ll remember Steve Kerr’s disastrous moves a lot longer than anything Terry Porter did or didn’t do.

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That’s what Pete Vecsey is reporting in the New York Post.

Talk about being set up to fail. They trade Shawn Marion for Shaquille O’Neal, they’re playing with a 35-year-old point guard who doesn’t seem to realize he’s not the player he used to be and yet, nobody can accept the fact that this isn’t a running team any longer. Terry never had a chance there.

Yeah, fire the coach. It’s HIS fault. If you do that, Steve Kerr, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

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Don’t remember when I’ve seen a better game. It was a classic. Trust me, if all NBA games were played at that pace, they’d be selling a ton more tickets than they sell now. THAT was what NBA basketball used to be all about on a regular basis. In the early 1990s, such games were common. Let’s take a closer look at some of the happenings:

• You can say both teams played poor defense, but that wasn’t always the case. There were a LOT of tough shots made. “Travis Outlaw made some amazing shots,” Terry Porter said after the game. “A lot of their guys did. I don’t know if we were as bad on defense as it looked.”
• Actually, I think the Suns were better, defensively, than the Blazers quite often in the game.
• Phoenix made 56.9 percent of its shots overall. It made 66.7 percent of its three-point attempts. It made 86.2 percent of its foul shots (on a night when Shaq went 5 for 7). It had 28 assists on 41 baskets. It scored 119 points. AND IT LOST THE GAME BY FIVE!!!! My goodness, that’s incredible.
• In a game that finished in regulation with a 124-119 score, there were only 28 fast-break points. TOTAL. That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t really a fast-paced game, it was just very good ball movement and spectacular shooting. Spectacular shooting.
• Don’t pay much attention to rebounding stats in this game. There were only 67 rebounds, total, to be had.
• The Blazers really played hard. HARD. I think Phoenix is one of the toughest matchups in the league for them. But this team found another gear Thursday night.
• I’m telling you right now, folks, Greg Oden is coming. He’s coming. He got a couple of cheap touch fouls that shouldn’t have been called that sent him to the bench but he made a big leap from his last game against Shaq. You can still pick-and-roll Shaq to death and Portland opened the game doing it. You’re going to see more of that as the year goes on.
• Brandon Roy. What can you say — on this night he was almost as good as Damon Stoudamire? Uh, that’s not quite enough — even though Damon’s team-record 54 points is safe for now.
• Roy needed only 27 shots to score 52 points. He got to the foul line 21 times. Big scorers, clutch scorers, usually live at the foul line. “He’s learning how to do that,” Nate McMillan said after the game. “He’s learning how to draw the fouls without getting hurt. The biggest thing with Brandon is his health. He’s stronger this year and he’s learning how to protect himself better.”
• Steve Blake was terrific. You better not leave him open if he makes his first shot.
• The Blazers had only six turnovers and the bench had five of them. Rudy had three of them.
• Portland had only 23 assists on 45 baskets. That’s because so much of the Blazers’ offense was isolation stuff. Roy and Outlaw were getting a lot of their points off one-on-one drives and pullups. In the playoffs, teams are not going to allow them to just clear a side and play against just one defender. There will be hard double teams.
• Phoenix is one of the best offensive teams in basketball, no doubt. I don’t care what people say, the Suns don’t need to run. They need to defend better. In the halfcourt, they’re going to score so easily a lot of nights they need just a smidgen of defense to win.
• There was one incredible thing about this game that nobody’s mentioned. It was as if the ghost of Earl Strom came down for one night and inhabited the body of Monty McCutchen. Earl — one of the great referees of all times — would often tell his partner(s) to just put the whistle in their pocket and let him call the game by himself. I swear, Monty made about 80 percent of the calls in this game. And about half of them were not very accurate. I’m not sure when I’ve seen this happen before but the NBA ought to be asking these three officials why this happened.
• Steve Nash — 11 assists, 6 turnovers. He’s still a great player, but I believe he’s slowing down a little. He’s lucky he’s not in the old full-blown running game or he’d be toast already.
• A great crowd. It really helps. I have to say, the franchise is really doing a great job of putting fannies in the seats. Bad economy? No problem. Bad weather. So what? The place was legitimately packed. And I can’t imagine what the TV ratings might have been.
• That game probably kicked the whole town’s hysteria level up one full click on the scale. It’s going to be nuts around here come playoff time.

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Well done in all respects. As usual, the Trail Blazers did a sensational job on the video stuff, and then even threw in a tribute to Terry when the dancers shimmied to “Bust a Bucket.”

You don’t see Terry that emotional very often. This was something well deserved and long overdue. And as my pal Ian Furness said on “Talkin’ Ball” last night — what’s wrong with retiring a few more numbers? Everyone feels good, it’s a great way to pay tribute not only to individuals but to teams. There’s still plenty of room left up there, too.

I expect the Bob Gross ceremony to go just as well Thursday night with a chance for a lot of people who never saw him play to be introduced to his unique, always-moving style of play. It should be another great night.

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Terry was known for his clutch free-throw shooting. He was as close to automatic in a close game as you’re going to ever get. Pressure made him better.

One season, though, he started out a little slow from the free throw line. So, as was his way, Porter was putting in extra time after practice trying to work his way through the shooting problems. My son, Will, often got to attend practices with me on days he wasn’t in school and was under the basket rebounding for Terry. This was pretty common and the players liked the fact that even though he wasn’t very big, he hustled after the ball, rifled it back to them and didn’t mess around. Besides, this was in the days of two assistant coaches — not seven or eight. There wasn’t anyone else around to rebound for them.

Casually, being a curious kid who was playing basketball in high school, my son asked Porter why he’d changed his routine at the line from the previous season. He probably knew Porter’s routine because he used to copy it like a lot of other kids in town. Good shooters have EXACTLY the same rhythm and bounce at the line on every single shot.

Terry pondered the question about his routine. I really don’t think he’d noticed that he’d changed a couple of little things. But in the next game he went back to the pre-shot routine he’d used the previous season and was right back to his old accurate self at the foul line. Problem solved.

That night during the game, Bill Schonely mentioned on the radio broadcast that Porter thought he’d figured out his problem at the line and had gotten a tip from Will Jaynes at practice about his routine that he hadn’t thought about. Man, what a thrill for a young kid. And thing is, Porter didn’t have to say that. He went out of his way to do it. To this day, my son delights in the story — not for anything that has to do with himself but for how thoughtful Terry Porter was toward him.

(Quick sidebar — All the guys on that team were incredible with kids. Jerome, Duck, Clyde, Buck . . . going back to Kiki Vandeweghe, Mychal Thompson . . . I’m leaving so many of them out, too. Sidebar to this sidebar — Whenever my son rebounded for a player, that player would end his workout by rebounding for my son. To this day, he finds it incredible that he’d rebound for an NBA player, then that player would turn around and shag a few of his shots. Vandeweghe once even took the time to teach him his patented step-back move. These were quality people — and not just with the beat writer’s kid. That didn’t matter. It’s just the way they were.)

But Terry Porter was unique — so genuine and kind, yet such a tough player at the same time. A very special guy.

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At this point, it was kind of difficult to find something new to say about Terry Porter. But the Trail Blazers kindly asked me to do a piece on him for their Web site and magazine and I think I pulled together some stuff you haven’t seen before.

That story, with thanks to Casey for good editing, is here.

Congrats, Terry. Well-deserved.

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