You’ve heard of the “rebound” girlfriend?  Terry Porter was the “rebound” coach.  It was never going to last.

You know what I’m talking about (at least, I hope you do…maybe you’re one of those guys who married your high school sweetheart 25 years ago).  You’re in a committed long term relationship with a woman.  But…it ends suddenly.  Painful divorce, nasty break-up, whatever.

The next person you go out with is the “rebound” girlfriend.  She could be the sweetest, nicest, sexiest gal in the world but because she is just so different from the woman you just spent all that time with, you have a hard time adjusting to her and so does everybody you know.  The success rate of a relationship with the “rebound” girlfriend is what, like 2%?  Everybody knows the “rebound” girlfriend doesn’t work.

So there you go, Terry Porter was the “rebound” coach.  Everyone was in love with Mike D’Antoni.  He was likeable, fun, entertaining and loose.  His basketball teams had quality (they won) and quantity (high level of entertainment every single night).  Following the breakup – and you can blame it on whoever you want – nobody could embrace what Terry Porter was about.  Players, fans, media…nobody.   That was Porter’s biggest problem; he wasn’t Mike D’Antoni.

But don’t you for a second think that because Porter is gone the problem is solved.  Oh, if it were only that simple.  Steve Kerr had an entire month (the time from D’Antoni’s departure to Porter’s arrival) to find the next coach.  His hand picked successor lasted three months.  The fact that Porter lasted only 51 games, to me, is far more a reflection of Kerr than Porter.

Is there a plan?  A sense of direction?  Are they up tempo or slow it down?  Are things going through Shaq?  Amare?  Nash?  How about all those draft picks from the last couple of years – the ones you decided not to sell off – how are those players working out for you?

Do you get the sense the Suns are just winging it right now and have been ever since the Shaq trade?  The day they made that deal they lost their identity.  They’ve been stumbling around in the dark ever since, trying to figure out who they are.

The last time I had this little faith in the future of this team was when they signed Stephon Marbury to a huge contract extension then traded him just a few months later.  By then they had already fired Frank Johnson and promoted D’Antoni.  It made you want to grab Bryan Colangelo by the lapels and yell  “do you have any friggin’ clue what you’re doing?”  Turns out…they did.  They won 62 games the next year after getting Nash.

But until Kerr does something…anything to make me believe he can pull the same kind of a rabbit out of the same kind of a hat, I won’t believe it.  There just isn’t any evidence to support it.