J-Speaks: Hall of Fame Innovator of Famed "Triangle Offense" Passes at 96

He was the innovator of one of the most innovative offenses in NBA history that turned some four of the best players in the game into not just Hall of Famers but NBA champions multiple times. An offense that allowed the surrounding role players play to their strengths and created a cohesion which gave opposing defenses headaches. Last week, the NBA family said goodbye to one of the finest coaches in the history of basketball. 

Morice “Tex” Winter, the pioneer of the famed “Triangle Offense” who was an assistant on fellow Hall of Famer Phil Jackson’s 11 championship teams with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers passed away a week ago yesterday. He was 96 years old. 

The family of the Naismith Hall of Famer who was enshrined in Springfield, MA on August 12, 2011 on his eight opportunity according to NBA.com passed away in Manhattan, KS, where he began his basketball coaching journey in 1947, leading the Wildcats to the Final Four twice and to eight Big Seven/Eight championships in his 14 seasons (1954-68) as head coach. 

Back on Apr. 25, 2009, Winters, who is survived by his sons Russ, Brian and Chris suffered a stroke in Manhattan, KS while attending a Kansas State basketball reunion. An uncooperative right side and nerve pain in his neck and shoulder were some of the after-effects Winters suffered after that previously mentioned stroke.  

The Chicago Bulls released a statement last Wednesday saying of the man who spent six decades coaching basketball at the collegiate and NBA levels, “Tex Winter was a basketball legend and perhaps the finest fundamental teacher in the history of our game. He was an innovator who had high standards for how basketball should be played and approached every day. Those of us who were lucky enough to play for him will always respect his devotion to the game of basketball. His contributions to the Bulls organization will always be remembered.” 

The Lakers also released a statement via their owner Jeanie Buss which said, “On behalf of the entire Lakers organization, I’d like to express our sadness at the passing of Tex Winter.” 

“Tex helped lead the team to four championships and was a mentor to many of our coaches and players. In addition to his numerous contributions to the game of basketball, Tex was a wonderful man and he will be dearly missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Winters family.” 

Winter brought his innovative offense that he called in his 1962 book “The Triple-Post Offense” to the “Windy City” in 1985 when he was hired by Bulls’ general manager Jerry Krause to teach the “Triangle Offense” to Michael Jordan. One year later after Phil Jackson became the head coach of the Bulls in 1989-90, they began a run of winning six titles in eight seasons, with two three-peat title runs, with the first happening in 1991, 1992 and 1993, and the second in 1996, 1997, and 1998. 

Jordan, now owner of the Charlotte Hornets said in a statement last week e-mailed to the Chicago Tribune, “I learned so much from coach Winter. He was a pioneer and a true student of the game. His ‘Triangle Offense’ was a huge part of our six championships with the Bulls. He was a tireless worker. Tex was always focused on details and preparation and a great teacher. I was lucky to paly for him. My condolences to his family.” 

The triangle not only turned Jordan from a supreme talent into a six-time champion but it made him an even better scorer as well as a willing and great passer. It also made fellow Hall of Famer and the Robin to Jordan’s Batman in fellow Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen into one of the best point-forwards in NBA history where he not just a solid No. 2 scorer on the Bulls but a prolific passer.

That prolific passing was rewarded by the superior jump shooting from forward Horace Grant, who won four titles with the Bulls and Lakers as he was the equivalent of the so-called stretch four back then from 15-to-17 feet, the equivalent of the stretch four back then. That offense also allowed the likes of B.J. Armstrong, John Paxson, Steve Kerr, Jud Buechler, Toni Kukoc, Craig Hodges, Bobby Hansen, and Trent Tucker to get wide open shots, especially from three-point range and they made them at a very high 40 percent and over clip.   

On last Friday’s edition of “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN, Armstrong who said that he remembers most about his former assistant coach is his saying that his main job as a coach was to equip you with the necessary skills to function and operate “under duress” in hostile environment’s like in an opposing team’s arena. He always stressed the fundamentals of the game to the point that he would make him and Pippen lineup and throw bounce passes. 

Armstrong said that he and his teammate of six years Pippen would look at each other when they did this offensive drill and ask why do we need to throw bounce passes if we had made it to the highest level of basketball in the world? 

He answered, “In the locker room he would always say the same thing, ‘There’s no substitute for effort and energy.’” 

Armstrong added that it was the players job to bring that effort and energy to the game, who was the first coach in the former point guard’s career to empower him to ask permission to tell him the truth. 

“That was very empowering for me that a person saw me beyond just me as a player in a uniform,” he said. “He said, ‘B.J. do I have the power to tell you the truth? Are you giving me permission to tell you the truth?’ Which was very empowering to me as a young kid, you know out of Detroit to say, “You know what, this guy sees B.J. and that we’re going to have some type of relationship that goes beyond just me just player/coach relationship.”

Pippen in concurrence with Armstrong said Winter “Offensively he was a guru and he wanted everyone to understand the game from a perspective of not being talented and not being the most skilled player on the court but just play the game the right way and everybody wins.” 

Winter was a guy early on in Pippen’s NBA journey that was as he said his biggest critic. Every time in a time out Pippen did want to see the Bulls’ assistant coach because he was going to give him a look or criticize him for goofing on a recent offensive set. 

Those critiques though were all in the learning process to where he can get on one of the stars of the team that every player was going to be held to the same standard, which Pippen says that there is no person that he appreciates more in his basketball career than Winter. A guy who believed in and he holds Winter in high regard for that. 

One other NBA great that Winters had a major impact on was future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant, who he also helped turn from a talented player into one of the best in the game from not just a talent standpoint but an intellectual and fundamental one. So much so that Bryant, who won four of his title with Winters as Jackson’s assistant in L.A. said on social media said last week that he was his “mentor.” 

“I sat with Tex & watched every minute of every game during our first season together. He taught me how to study every detail. He was a bball genius in every sense of the word. I’ll miss him deeply. Thank you Tex. I wouldn’t be where I am today without you. Rest in Peace.” 

The Oscar winner for his and director Glen Keane’s 2018 animated short film “Dear Basketball” has taken those lessons he learned from those film studies with Winter and turned them into an analysis show on www.espnplus.com called “Detail,” where Bryant looks at trends, the X’s and O’s and as well as other aspects of how the game of basketball is played and how victory is achieved.  

Born near Wellington, TX on Feb. 25, 1922, Winter’s basketball journey began at Compton Community College in Los Angeles, CA after graduating from high school in 1940. He played both basketball and track at CCC and then earned a scholarship in both sports at Oregon State University where he also played both sports for the Beavers, where he also met his wife Nancy. 

In early 1943, both enter the US Navy where Tex went into fighter pilot training and Nancy into WAVES. Tex also played on the basketball team where he was the starting point guard for commanding officer Chuck Taylor. 

Three years after leaving the Navy with the rank of Ensign, Winter went back to college at the University of Southern California (USC) where he was an All-American pole vaulter and played basketball for the Trojans alongside eventual Hall of Famers Bill Sharman and Alex Hannum, and Gene Rock. 

After graduating from USC in 1947, Winter immediately entered coaching as an assistant to Hall of Famer Jack Gardner at Kansas State University for four seasons. 

In 1951 he became the youngest coach in major college basketball at the time for Marquette University. 

He would return to be the head coach of the Wildcats for a 15-year stint posting a 261-118 mark. Winters still owns the record for the most league championships in school history with eight and in 1958 and 1964 led K-State to the Final Four. In total, Winter led the Wildcats to the postseason seven times overall, including six trips to the NCAA Tournament. 

Winters was also head coach at the University of Washington from 1968-71, the University of Northwestern from 1973-78 and Long Beach State from 1978-83. 

His first coaching job in the NBA was when the legendary Pete Newell hired him as head coach of the Houston Rockets from 1971-73, where he posted a 51-78 mark. 

After his five-year sting as the head man on the sidelines for the 49ers in 1983, Winters contemplated retirement until he got the call from GM Krause to be an assistant with the Bulls in 1985 and the rest is history. 

He authored a 451-336 record as a collegiate head coach. While his only chance as a head coach for two seasons in the early 1970s, his work as an assistant and consultant for 23 seasons made him into a Hall of Famer. 

His fundamental teachings turned Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kobe Bryant from talented basketball players into fundamental, exceptional Hall of Famers. As good of a basketball coach he was, Morice Tex Winter was an exceptional, human being whose ability to communicate with fellow Hall of Famer Phil Jackson, the previously mentioned Hall of Famers, the role players they played with turned the Bulls into six-time champions in eight years and the Lakers into five-time champions in 10 years. 

“A really great man in this league,” Nichols, a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern in 1995 said a week ago on her show about Winters. “I had the pleasure of meeting him a bunch of times when I was covering the Bulls as a college student and he was as classy to me as 20-year-old just trying to figure out the NBA as he was to every player he worked with.” 

Information and quotations are courtesy of 3/5/18 The New York Times story “Kobe Bryant Wins an Oscar, and Lands a Jab at Laura Ingraham,” by Victor Mather; 10/10/18 www.nba.com story “Tex Winter, Innovative Hall of Fame Coach, Dead at 96;” 10/11/18 4 a.m. edition of NBATV’s “Gametime” with Kristen Ledlow and Dennis Scott; 10/11/18 3 p.m. edition of “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols. Amin Elhassan and Stan Van Gundy; 10/12/18 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump” with Rachel Nichols, Amin Elhassan, and Scottie Pippen; https://ww/imdb.com/title/tt8297674; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Nichols_(journalist).