Game Over 
Sports
Winter in L.A.
Can Wellington native Tex Winter bring the magic back to the Lakers?
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Unfortunately, his second round in the NBA started as poorly as his first. Jordan was injured, the stands were half empty, and head coach Stan Albeck didn’t run the triangle offense. Krause replaced Albeck with the fiery Doug Collins, but Collins used his own system as well. Frustrated, Tex once again considered retirement. All that changed in 1989, when Phil Jackson took over as head coach of the Bulls and gave Tex the freedom to run the offense. “Tex is officially the God of Basketball,” says Jackson. “I find him, as a mentor or a teacher, a wonderful guy to have around.” With the two coaches working together, the Bulls became a dynasty using Winter’s offense, and Jordan became perhaps the most storied athlete in history. But it didn’t last forever. Jordan retired, Jackson rode off on a motorcycle, and Pippen signed with the Houston Rockets. Tex stuck around Chicago for a year, when the Bulls were one of the worst teams in the league. In one game they scored just 49 points, an NBA record for futility since the introduction of the 24-second shot clock. (Ironically, the previous record was set less than a year earlier, when the Bulls held the Utah Jazz to just 54 points in the NBA finals.)
If Tex was ready to retire (again), yet another phone call would change his mind. Jackson came out of retirement to take the top job with the Lakers, and he asked Tex to help him put a talented team over the top. Tex headed west. The Lakers started this season 8-4 but lost only eleven games after that. Sure, they have O’Neal and Bryant, but the team lacks depth. Glen Rice is the only other consistent scorer, but he shot a career low of 40 percent from the field. So how has this team suddenly become so much better, when it was swept out of the playoffs by the Utah Jazz in 1998 and the San Antonio Spurs in 1999? Well, there’s Jackson, of course. And then there’s Tex. “Tex has had a great hand in this team’s improvement from last year,” says Ron Harper, who played for the Bulls for five seasons before joining the Lakers. “He’s a large part of our success.” Kobe Bryant agrees. “He has so much knowledge stored up that you can’t help but learn from him,” he says. “Tex has definitely had a major influence on me.”
As for Shaq, Tex hasn’t always found it easy to work with the undeniably gifted player who also fancies himself a rapper (he has three albums) and a movie star (with roles in forgettable films like Steel, Kazaam, and Blue Chips) but whose desire to win it all has been questioned. O’Neal acknowledges Winter’s influence in his own unique way. “Tex is cool,” he says in his trademark gravelly whisper. “He’s an LSU guy. I listen to what he says . . . most of the time.” Jackson says Winter has gotten through to his star center—who is a favorite to win the league’s most valuable player award—by not backing down. “Tex knows what’s right or wrong in basketball, and he doesn’t have any trouble telling you, whether you’re Michael Jordan or Dickey Simpkins,” says Jackson.
But what is this triangle offense exactly, about which Tex literally wrote the book, a 228-page work called The Triple-Post Offense that only a hardcore basketball fan could love? With all the talk of “ping passes” and “pinch posts” and “dribble weave options,” the triangle offense comes down to spacing the floor and reacting to what the defense does. Rather than run set plays, like Utah’s endless pick-and-rolls, the Lakers constantly pass the ball to find the best shot. Tex says that players have up to 24 options off one pass. Jordan has hesitated to say whether the Bulls would have won six championships without the triangle. “We’ll never know,” he once said. “That’s a big if.” But, he added, “The triangle stabilizes this team as a system, so it has its place in our success.” And Jackson, who occasionally led team meditations and decorated the locker room in Native American totems, describes the triple-post in typically enigmatic terms: “It’s the tai chi of basketball,” he says. Okay, that’s fine. But let’s be honest: It didn’t hurt to have Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. “Sure, it helps to have Jordan on your team,” Winter says. “But I think the triangle helped him too. It helped him get open so he could get his shots.” (NBA success aside, Tex says his triple-post offense has received attention from other disciplines too. “A farmer in Kansas wrote me and asked for my book on triple-post fences,” Winter recalls with a smile. “True story.”)
Despite the Bulls’ and Lakers’ accomplishments, few will remember the triangle offense. Everyone, however, will remember Jordan. And as Jordan’s legend grew, the credit for the Bulls’ success was placed squarely on his shoulders. “The reason [the triangle] worked is simple: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen,” said Bulls guard B. J. Armstrong. So what if the skeptics are right? Maybe, as former UT coach Abe Lemons once said, “There are two plays: South Pacific and put the ball in the basket.” Maybe Tex, after all these years, was finally in the right place at the right time with the Bulls. Other professional coaches, including Cotton Fitzsimmons, with Phoenix, and Quinn Buckner and Jim Cleamons, with Dallas, tried to use the triangle. Not one lasted two seasons. So why didn’t those coaches win? “I wasn’t there to help them,” Winter says simply.
And there are some pretty strong arguments for Winter’s position. Jordan may be the greatest player ever, but that never guaranteed the Bulls a championship, much less six. “I know a lot of coaches who’d screw it up, even with Jordan,” says Utah Jazz president Frank Layden. “The thing is, it’s an excellent offense, it was excellent for the players, and it fit them perfectly.” But Layden adds, “They also happened to have the greatest player of all time, in my opinion.” For his part, Tex says he doesn’t care if people give all the credit for the Bulls’ success to Jordan. “It doesn’t bother me a bit,” he says. “If someone says it was all Jordan, well, it just shows they don’t understand the importance of the team concept in basketball.”
His own words may have to be enough for Winter, who is again mulling retirement. Though he received the John Bunn Award in 1998, which only 25 other people have won in the history of the NBA, he has been rejected in three bids for the Basketball Hall of Fame. Still, he is optimistic that the Hall of Fame will ultimately call. “I think I’ll eventually have the chance to get in,” he says. “They might be waiting until I retire.” To many, Tex’s legacy is already set. “Tex is a legend. No doubt about it,” says Layden. “This man has a long history of being a winning coach, an innovator. You don’t stick around this long if you’re a phony. You don’t think Michael Jordan would see through a phony? Tex should be in the Hall of Fame.”
And, of course, Tex has the championships, which he undeniably played a major part in winning. That may be the greatest testament to his legacy: That a man who lived through the Depression and played in canvas shoes made such a mark in today’s NBA. “Texans want to know what I’ve done to live up to being from Texas,” he says, pausing for a moment. “Well, this could be what I’ve done to live up to it.” And with that, clipboard in his hand, Tex ambles off to the court. There’s at least one more title to be won before he retires.
Joel Reese wrote about former Dallas Cowboy Golden Richards for the December 1995 issue of Texas Monthly.
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