A Quote by Terry Porter

I had never dreamed about the NBA like some guys did. I was a non-scholarship player at an NAIA college. I played on the Boys and Girls Club team in my freshman and sophomore years of high school before I made the high school team. I was our backup center in college.
I was more into music, before I got into college. In high school, I used to play guitar and sing. I did a lot of that. But, when I graduated and went to college, I remember my freshman year and this girl from across the hall, who is one of my good friends to this day, had a brother who was in the school improv team. We went to go watch a show and it blew my face off.
It's tough at first. You realize in the NBA, it's not easy. Each and every night, you're playing against that player that was the best high school player, that player that was the best player on his college team.
I think college prepared me at a really high level. High school, you can take some plays off on the defensive end. Not on purpose, but if your man gets tired, you can rest a little bit. But once you get to college, and especially in the NBA, you can't do that. Even if my man gives the ball up, I'm on help side, helping my team out.
I played team sport as a kid and loved it. I played basketball and football throughout high school into college in the intramurals and I loved it. There was nothing like a team.
Even before I made my high school team, I'd say I want to be a NBA player, and people laughed at me with, 'Get out of here, you ain't going to be a NBA player. You don't even play basketball.'
I had this whole plan when I graduated high school: I was going to go to college, date a few guys, and then meet THE guy at the end of my freshman year, maybe at the beginning of my sophomore year. We'd be engaged by graduation and married the next year. And then, after some traveling, we'd start our family. Four kids, three years apart. I wanted to be done by the time I was 35.
Five guys on my high school team made the NBA.
One thing that did happen to me, though - in high school, there was a club to help prepare people for scholarships and they wouldn't let girls take the class. But I studied for it, and that year I was the only one from the high school who got the scholarship. That was my vindication.
I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team.
I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
The only time I'd played organized basketball was my sophomore year in high school, when I barely made the junior varsity team.
I've been No. 12 my entire career. My cousin Nikki Haerling was a good basketball player, she wore No. 12 in high school and college, and my dad, he was No. 12 as well. I actually just started wearing it when I got to high school my freshman year.
I was scheduled to graduate from high school in 1943, but I was in a course that was supposed to give us four years of high school plus a year of college in our four years. So by the end of my junior year, I would have had enough credits to graduate from high school.
I got to play with my older brother in high school and college, and I played with my younger brother in high school and college, so I kind of get to do everything, so it was really pretty sweet.
When my father became vice president, I was a sophomore in high school. I'd do things like go on a run with my soccer team and purposely dodge the security van. Then my parents compromised with the Secret Service when I went to college. I just had a panic button in my dorm room, so if I pressed that, they'd be there within 2 or 3 minutes.
In high school, I was one of the cofounders of New Kids on the Block my freshman year in high school. But I also started studying theatre in high school my freshman year as well. So throughout high school, I was actually doing both.
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