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Basketball finds a lion in Winter

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Apr 15, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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SALEM Ñ It’s gaudy, but that’s what championship rings are all about.

Tex Winter has nine of them, but the newest is special Ñ diamond studs designed in the shape of a triangle, dedicated by the Los Angeles Lakers to the father of the “triangle” offense after their run to the NBA title in 2003.

“The other ones are in a safety deposit box,” Winter says. “I take ’em out once in a while to show to people. But this one I wear.”

Six times in Chicago, three times in Los Angeles, Winter has been a member of the coaching staff for the team that has emerged as the NBA champion.

“It’s unbelievable, really,” says Winter at a restaurant down the street from his west Salem retirement home. “It’s just being in the right place at the right time, being alongside the right people. But I think I helped. I made a contribution.”

Indeed. Phil Jackson Ñ head coach on all nine of those championship squads Ñ heaps credit on the grandfatherly Winter, 82, and for good reason. Jackson employed Winter’s offensive system after he took over the Bulls in 1987, and it served them well.

Morice Frederick Winter Ñ he became Tex after he moved to L.A. from Lubbock, Texas, at age 12 Ñ retired after the 2003-04 season because, well, it was time.

“Fifty-seven years of coaching is long enough, isn’t it?” he asks, and nobody can argue with that.

Decades in college trenches

Winter is best-known for his 19 years as an NBA assistant, and he also was head coach of the San Diego Rockets for a season and a half in the early ’70s.

But the bulk of Winter’s work was done in the college ranks as head coach at places such as Washington, Long Beach State, Northwestern and Kansas State. The last school was his first stop and his greatest success. There, he compiled a 261-118 record, eight Big Eight titles and a pair of Final Four appearances in 15 seasons.

All that, and his innovation with the triangle offense, would seem to guarantee him inclusion in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Yet Winter, who has been nominated five times, has yet to be so honored.

“I understand,” he says with a shrug. “My reputation as a college coach has kind of been forgotten. (Hall of Fame voters) reflect upon me as an assistant coach in the NBA. Most of the people who would have voted for me are dead.”

Winter and his wife of 58 years, Nancy, have settled in Oregon after considering the state home for decades. Tex met Nancy, a La Grande native, during his one year as a student athlete at Oregon State in 1942-43. They bought a place in Newport two years ago, then sold it when they decided they wanted to be closer to Portland, where son Russ lives, and to the Salem area, where Nancy has relatives.

After two years competing in basketball and track and field at Compton (Calif.) Junior College, Winter was set to pole vault at San Jose State when he was ambushed by a pair of Long Beach Community College basketball players, Bob Howard and Don Cecil, who were headed to Corvallis to play for Slats Gill.

“We were all on the same train from L.A. Ñ me to San Jose, them to Corvallis,” Winter recalls. “We got to talking and they said, ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ They called Slats, and he invited me up, probably in fear he would lose them. I wasn’t certain about San Jose State, so I went for it.”