How Wichita State’s Craig Porter broke the cycle to become a Terre Haute hero
Sometimes it feels like he walks around with an invisible weight vest strapped on.
Craig Porter Jr. has been carrying that long before he put the Wichita State men’s basketball team on his shoulders last weekend to give No. 14-ranked Houston all it could handle. It’s been long before he became a Shocker, even.
There is adversity in basketball and adversity in life; Porter has navigated enough of both to know one is not like the other.
Playing a game he loves is easy, even when it’s difficult. It’s a perspective gained only through the experience of real struggle, real adversity.
Growing up the youngest, scrawniest and shortest of three brothers, life wasn’t always easy for Porter in Terre Haute, Indiana. He didn’t always know where his next meal was coming from or where he was going to lay his head down at night. He didn’t always make the right decisions.
But Porter was bound and determined to make it out of Terre Haute, to not become another story of woulda, coulda, shoulda from his city, to break the cycle so many fall victim to.
To fully appreciate the significance of Porter’s recent breakthrough on the basketball court, a full understanding of where he comes from and what he has overcome is required.
This is a story of a 21-year-old carrying the weight of an entire family, an entire city.
“My family always told me when I was growing up that I could be something special,” Porter said. “They told me I didn’t have to look at what they were doing. They knew they didn’t always do the right thing, but they always believed in my future. They believed I could help everybody in the city. So I took that belief and I ran with it.”
‘Focused on everything but basketball’
More in this world has always seemed possible to Porter with a basketball on his fingertips.
His mother knew he was going to be a special ball player after his first organized game at the Boys and Girls Club. The league was supposed to be for 5-year-olds, but there was 4-year-old Craig swishing back-to-back threes when his older peers were just learning how to dribble.
“Craig was always a natural,” said Rachel Cooper, his mother.
There was no shortage of athletic ability among the three brothers. LaShaun Grady, three years older than Craig, was a skilled hooper himself, while Keith Porter, a year older than Craig, was the most physical of the three and later became the starting varsity running back in high school. Craig, meanwhile, was “5-foot-1 on a good day” when he began high school. Toughness wasn’t a choice for Craig, it was a requirement to survive.
Craig didn’t learn how to play basketball by dribbling through orange cones and shooting baskets with a trainer. His lessons took place on the street in front of the family’s home, where a beat-up basketball goal was perched on the curb. The older brothers would invite their friends and they would play so late into the night, they would take the keys to their mother’s car and turn on the headlights so they could play longer. There were so many boys out on the street playing, those in the neighborhood knew to avoid turning down Spruce Street at night to avoid the delay in clearing the street.
Whether it was on Spruce Street or at the Hyte Center, the local go-to for pick-up hoops, Craig was almost always the youngest, shortest and tiniest on the court — and if he ever forgot, his two older brothers were there to remind him. He could rarely score against them, so that’s why he developed his passing at an early age.
“They would always foul me, pick on me, do whatever they could to bother me,” Craig said. “It made me tougher.”
Another fortunate break occurred when Kenny Wayne Burkins, a local AAU coach, was driving down Spruce Street and noticed the diminutive Porter shooting hoops. He was looking for players for his fifth-grade travel team and thought Porter would be a good fit.
A chance encounter turned into Burkins becoming an influential figure in Porter’s childhood. Not only did he become his AAU coach during the summers, he would drive Porter and his friends to different cities during the weekends, let them stay over at his house whenever they wanted and was always there for him every step of the way.
“He just saw this random kid shooting and he took a chance on me and I’m very grateful for that,” Porter said. “Terre Haute is a pretty small city, we don’t get a lot of attention. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for kids to travel around the country and see that there are different things outside of Terre Haute. I was fortunate enough to have a coach do that for me.”
Porter always enjoyed summer basketball because he didn’t have to worry about school. But when the school year rolled around, he quickly became disillusioned with playing basketball at Terre Haute South. He stopped caring about his grades and stopped going to school.
He flunked off the freshman team by the end of the season. The downward spiral continued for another year, as Porter didn’t even play basketball for the school his sophomore year because he was rarely in school at all. He was young and immature, not always making the right decisions.
“I was so small, I didn’t think I had a future in basketball,” Porter said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to grow. That’s when I was focused on everything but basketball. I was getting sidetracked, staying at home, skipping school. I was doing a lot of negative stuff.”
Porter was teetering on the edge of falling into a cycle that’s all too familiar in Terre Haute.
‘Just can’t break the cycle’
True to its Hoosier State form, Terre Haute is a city that revolves around basketball. For every success story like Craig Porter, there are stories of lost dreams and unfulfilled potential.
Tatu Brown was one of many. He was a star basketball player in the mid-1990s for the same high school Porter attended, good enough to play in college but not with the grades to go Division I. He ended up at Iowa Western Community College, but his career fizzled out and he returned back home to Terre Haute and fell back into the cycle.
He started dealing drugs and was eventually caught by the police, leading to Brown spending 10 years in federal prison on drug charges.
“Sometimes the wrong decision can be your last decision,” said Brown, who took advantage of a second chance on life when he was released from prison and became a community mentor to Porter and other at-risk teens at the Hamilton Center in Terre Haute. “I always tell my kids now, ‘You can do it right and do it light, or you can do it wrong and do it long.’ You don’t want to be the one going to jail for dealing drugs or catching a case or even just out on the streets struggling.”
Michelle Tracy, the lead guidance counselor at Terre Haute South, started to become familiar with Porter’s story when he was a sophomore in high school because of his attendance issues.
Porter’s case stood out to Tracy because when she asked his teachers about him, they described Porter as “quiet, polite and respectful.” The Porter she came to know was a jokester with an infectious smile with dimples. It didn’t take long for her to suss out that Porter was no troublemaker — he was just in need of support to help him get back on track.
A lot of kids in Terre Haute are just like Porter, she says.
“We see it here all the time where they will get involved with the things that their friends are doing and it’s like they just can’t break the cycle,” Tracy said. “So they’ll start working where their friends work. They’ll do the things their friends do, whether that’s drug-related or gang-related. They fall into this cycle where minor things trip them up and keep them in the system, so they’re constantly digging themselves out of a hole instead of being able to focus and use their talent to get out.”
Brown knows the pitfalls of that cycle all too well, which is why he has made it his new mission in life to mentor kids just like him, just like Porter to escape their circumstances and break the cycle.
“Sometimes you can’t be doing everything everybody else is doing,” Brown said. “Some of those guys, you might love them, but they’re smoking weed, not lifting, not in the gym, not getting shots up. They’re doing the wrong things and all of the signs say they’re going to keep going downhill. I try to show kids there’s a different option. It’s possible to step away from those things and be a leader. Sometimes you have to take the route that seems harder at the time, but it’s the right thing to do.”
‘Basketball saved my life’
In the summer between his sophomore and junior year, Porter shot up nearly 10 inches and stood 5-foot-11.
His desire to play high school ball had returned, but that didn’t undo the last three semesters of shoddy school work. Brown, his mentor, devised a plan where Porter would work on his homework for 45 minutes before basketball practice, so he would remain academically eligible.
Jevan McCoskey, a high school teammate and close friend to Porter, still remembers shooting around during open gym sessions and seeing Porter sitting in the bleachers at work. Porter sometimes stared longingly out at the court, but he always stayed in the bleachers until his homework was completed.
“Everybody knew Craig maybe didn’t have the best situation growing up, but if he was ever put in the right situation he was going to have success,” McCoskey said. “You could tell that he was starting to want it. Maybe at that point he knew basketball was something that could take him out of Terre Haute.”
In hindsight, it seems like fate that during the same year Maynard Lewis returned to become the head boys basketball coach at Terre Haute South. Lewis was a sterling example of what was possible for a kid coming out of Terre Haute; he was South’s all-time leading scorer and he went on to earn a degree and carve out a nice career at Purdue playing for legendary coach Gene Keady.
Lewis was the ideal coach for Porter at the time: the coach knew where the player came from, knew the struggles and obstacles he had to overcome, and most importantly, Lewis held Porter accountable.
Things were beginning to align for Porter, who was now motivated in school so he could pursue his talent in basketball. A tight-knit camaraderie formed on the team and Porter started to take responsibility for his actions. Just as important, a support system had developed around him: Lewis as his school coach, Burkins as his summer coach, Brown as his mentor and Tracy as his counselor.
As a result, Porter began to blossom midway through his junior season. He was good, not great, at just about every skill in basketball, but what made him special was something that couldn’t be coached: his instincts. The same ones he used on Spruce Street to survive playing against his older brothers were now allowing him to make highlight-reel plays on the court.
As a 6-foot-1 point guard, Porter led Terre Haute South in every statistical category except scoring, which he was second, and led the team to the Class 4A state quarterfinals. In a remarkable conclusion to his career, Porter was named to the “Supreme 15” by the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association, which picks the 15 best seniors in the basketball-obsessed state.
“It really is an incredible story,” Lewis said. “Craig went from being a nobody going into his junior year to one of the top 15 players in the state as a senior with guys like (NBA player) Romeo Langford. Sometimes I don’t even believe it myself.
“I’ll be honest with you, some coaches may have given up on Craig. He was kind of on his last chance. But Craig is just a gem. His story is one of those that I’ll always be proud of as a coach and he’s the reason why I will never give up on a player. Because I know if I had given up on Craig, it would’ve been a huge mistake.”
Earlier this month Terre Haute South celebrated its 50th anniversary by recognizing some of the best basketball players to come through the school. Porter made it on the list. Not bad for someone who could have been a high school dropout.
“Basketball saved my life,” Porter said. “I feel like if it wasn’t for basketball, I would probably be working at like Taco Bell right now.”
‘This is my first step through the door’
A standout senior season had put Porter on the radar for Division I teams, but it was became evident he needed to go the junior-college route first to make sure his grades were in order.
Porter didn’t have to look far, as Vincennes University and its prestigious basketball program was a short, one-hour drive from Terre Haute. Porter excelled on the elevated platform, becoming a full-time starter, filling up the stat sheet and playing a key role in the team winning the 2019 NJCAA championship.
Before becoming a Wichita State assistant coach ahead of the 2017-18 season, Lou Gudino first remembers watching Porter play as an assistant coach at Indiana State in 2017. As a native of Indiana — he grew up about 20 minutes north of Terre Haute in a small town named Clinton — Gudino was intrigued by Porter’s game and made sure to stay in constant contact with him when he took the job at WSU. The diligence paid off when WSU won the recruiting battle for Porter in March 2020.
“Craig is a guy who almost looks like he’s not playing that hard some of the time, but he’s always getting stuff done,” Gudino said. “He doesn’t jump out to you like Ricky Council with his athleticism, but what I always liked about his game is how he finds a way to make the right play and affect winning at a high level. And he just has unbelievable instincts when it comes to the game of basketball.”
While he enjoyed the thrill of Wichita State winning an improbable conference championship, Porter struggled his first year in Wichita personally. He injured his knee during the summer, which robbed him of his athleticism during the season. He also spent more time in COVID-19 protocol than out of it during the lead-up to the season, which put him even further behind. Porter averaged just 2.1 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game in a minor role.
When Porter entered his name into the transfer portal a week after the season ended, Gudino was crestfallen. A coach is always going to fight for a recruit he helped bring, but Gudino felt a special attachment to Porter with their Indiana roots.
“I know where he comes from, I know his people, his mentors,” Gudino said. “I felt like I would have failed him and his people if he ended up only being here for one year.”
Four days after putting his name in, Porter took his name out of the portal and committed to the Shockers. What has followed has been a breakout season for Porter, who has become a vital part of Wichita State’s team as its starting point guard. And just like he did at Terre Haute South, Porter is filling up the stat sheet: he leads the team in assists (3.6), steals (1.4) and blocks (1.1) and ranks fourth in rebounds (4.7).
In fact, Porter might have the title of the best shot-blocking point guard in the country. His block percentage of 4.62 ranks first in the country for players under 6-foot-2, per KenPom.com.
“It’s kind of like revenge for me,” Porter said. “I’m getting my licks back on all of the big guys since I got picked on as a little dude.”
Porter has always excelled in filling the gaps for his team, but recently he is breaking out of his shell on offense and showing he can be a legitimate scoring threat for Wichita State. After averaging 3.0 points and 2.0 assists and making a total of six three-pointers in the first 32 games of his WSU career, Porter is averaging 10.6 points and 4.5 assists with nine three-point makes in his last 10 games.
In last weekend’s double-overtime thriller against Houston, Porter was so unguardable late that Houston coach Kelvin Sampson had to switch to a zone defense. Porter scored all but four of his 17 points in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime periods.
“I really feel like this is just my first step through the door of where I could be,” Porter said. “I feel like I’m only going to continue to improve more and more off those numbers. As long as my team still believes in me, I’m going to keep showing them what I can do.”
‘A story like his can inspire future generations’
What makes this rise to stardom all the more impressive is that Porter is not only delivering for a team that is looking for a spark, he’s delivering for a family and a community counting on him.
It’s a burden for Porter to carry, knowing how much others have invested in his success, how much he has sacrificed to live the dream that others did not. Sometimes it weighs on him; most of the time he views it as a blessing.
“I like talking to the younger kids back home because I know what it’s like to be in their situation,” Porter said. “I’ve been through a lot of stuff in my life and I overcame it and I never thought I would. I want to give them hope and show them anything is possible.”
When he was at Vincennes, Porter would connect with Brown, his mentor at the Hamilton Center, to work with children who reminded him of himself. The kids would ride in vans to come to his games at Vincennes and Porter would pay it forward by coming to speak to them and be a mentor.
Porter says he feels like “a little bit of a celebrity” when he returns home, which makes him laugh. But there’s a reason why so the youth of Terre Haute adore him: his story resonates.
“Everybody loves Craig’s story because kids know where he comes from, they know his family, his struggles,” said Lewis, Porter’s high school coach. “Everyone’s background isn’t always the Brady Bunch, but Craig did the hard work and made changes in his life to get to where he is now. Normally kids in his situation don’t get out. And not only did he make it out, he’s having real success and that brings my heart so much joy.”
Tracy, the high school guidance counselor, is already using Porter’s story as an inspiration for the next generation at Terre Haute South.
“A lot of kids here have the same potential, but haven’t been able to make it out,” Tracy said. “I’m so proud of who he’s become and I make sure and tell him that every chance I get. A story like Craig can inspire future generations. Kids need someone to look up to who’s making good choices and doing positive things. He broke the cycle and now he can help the next generation.”
Porter, a sport management major, is on track to become the first member of his family to earn a bachelor’s degree in December, a distinction that Tracy says is every bit as important as his on-court production.
“Everyone knows the statistic about how many players actually make it pro,” Tracy said. “We see it all the time when kids get done playing their sport, they lose their identity. They were great athletes in high school or college when they had that support system in place, but then all of a sudden they move to that next phase in their life and they can’t make it work because they don’t have that foundation underneath them to keep them steady. Craig is building that foundation and I’m so proud of the work that he’s done.”
Porter, who plans on utilizing his extra year of college eligibility next season, has dreams of playing professionally.
But most importantly to him, Porter wants to continue to make his family proud. Life wasn’t always easy growing up, but they got through it together with love and a tight-knit bond that couldn’t be shaken.
And now Porter hopes that his brothers, LaShaun and Keith, and his parents, Rachel Cooper and Craig Porter Sr., feel like they can share in his success.
“We’ve had some trials and tribulations in our family, but Craig has always been focused on doing whatever he had to do to help our family,” said Cooper, who moved to Wichita to be closer to her son. “And there’s no question he’s done that. He’s changed all of our lives. I mean, I moved states away just to be there to support him because he’s honestly an inspiration to all of us. I know that sounds odd to say as his mother, but it’s the truth.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 9:11 AM.
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