THE BUDDY SYSTEM AS A TEAM, JACKSON & WINTER HAVE PROVED TO BE A WINNING COMBINATION.

Byline: Steve Dilbeck Staff Writer

EL SEGUNDO - He was a twin, born Morice Fredrick Winter on Feb. 22, 1922 near Lubbock, Texas. A child of the Depression, the son of a mechanic and a Dust Bowl refugee, he came to Southern California his sophomore year.

His new classmates at Huntington Park High near Long Beach caught his light drawl and quickly, if not too originally, dubbed him ``Tex.'' He didn't argue.

``With a name like Morice Fredrick Winter, you'd settle for Tex, too,'' he said.

That's Morice, as in Morris.

``I don't think my dad knew how to spell,'' he said.

Tex Winter first learned to play basketball at Huntington Park, playing well enough to earn scholarships at Oregon State, and after flying as a naval pilot during World War II, at USC.

He learned well enough that he's been teaching it ever since. Teaching it longer than anyone in college or professional basketball ever has.

``I didn't invent the game, but I've coached it longer than anyone in history,'' Winter said. ``I've coached it for 54 years. I take more pride in that than anything. If longevity is any mark for success, I'd think you'd have to say I've been successful.''

Winter's life has been one long success story. From his 50-year marriage to Nancy, to having coached over 300 college victories, to having been part of six NBA championship teams as assistant coach with the Bulls.

Yet the angle on Winter will always come in threes.

He is the architect of the triangle offense, the offense made most famous under head coach Phil Jackson with the Bulls and now brought to the Lakers.

It is why at age 78, the white-haired, sometimes crusty Winter is still coaching when others of his generation and stature have retired to the occasional speech or guest appearance at the old university.

Over a half-century since he became Kansas State's first full-time assistant coach, he is still teaching, still drilling the fundamentals, still prodding role player and superstar alike.

``I love the game,'' he said. ``Love to teach the game. My health has been good because I've taken care of myself. My whole life I've gotten an awful lot of sleep. I say I've hybernated half my life.

``Actually, I'm only about 40 years old.''

The frugal Winter is years younger in energy and spirit. The same drive that led him to pole vault to 14-4 on a bamboo pole - and might have left him an Olympian if not for an abdominal injury - still burns into the next millennium.

``Tex is just old chronologically,'' said Lakers assistant coach Jim Cleamons, who was with Winter for seven years with the Bulls. ``Tex's spirit is late 50s. There is a wonderful spirit and demeanor about him.''

Winter figured this was all behind him long ago. He had seemingly done it all. He played against Jackie Robinson in junior college. Pole vaulted against Bob Richards. Coached against Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson and Elgin Baylor - all in the same season. Opposed coaching greats John Wooden, Pete Newell and Phoag Allen while at Kansas State, the University of Washington, and, later Northwestern.

He had been a head coach in the NBA, even if it was a dismal experience with the Houston Rockets. And when a brief stint at Long Beach State went sour in 1983, Winter figured it was time to retire.

But a ``consulting job'' as a coach for Dale Brown at LSU kept him going for two more years, before Jerry Krause called with an assistant's job with the Bulls. Fifteen years later, he's still going.

``I've always worked just on a one-year basis throughout my pro career,'' he said. ``I've been on the verge of retiring for almost 15 years.''

Winter is the guru of the triangle offense. He first wrote a book about it - ``The Triple-Post Offense'' - in 1962. And although he normally may be soft-spoken, he's always a straight-shooter, unfailingly honest. He is highly demanding, as even Michael Jordan knows well.

Jordan said his mental game grew because of the coaching staffs he worked with, ``Winter being the most important because he probably criticized my game more than anybody. To me, that's a plus and a driving force.''

Even in Jordan's final season, while calling him the best to ever play the game, Winter said there were still fundamentals he needed to work on.

Winter makes the same kinds of demands on Lakers superstar center Shaquille O'Neal, which have not always gone over as well.

``Shaq is not an easy person to coach,'' Winter said. ``I like him, he's a fine person, and I think he's a great center, but he's not overly receptive. I've been a little disappointed in that. When you coach him, for some reason he takes it as you being negative instead of looking upon it as constructive criticism.

``He's not easy to deal with on that basis. His mind is pretty much made up, and why wouldn't it be? He is probably the best center in basketball today, the Most Valuable Player in the NBA, making the kind of money he makes. Why wouldn't he be pretty satisfied with where he is?

``In my opinion, that's the unfortunate part about it. He could be so much better than he is. It's hard for people to understand, but as a coach I feel that way about it.''

Winter said he tried to reconstruct O'Neal's free-throw shot, but the 7-1 center thought he was being negative and did not want Winter to continue. Now O'Neal has a private coach for his free-throw shooting.

Winter said O'Neal could even be the all-time best center, but ``I think he's satisfied with where he is, so he doesn't want to be bothered.''

O'Neal is, after all, the reason Winter is here. He is the reason Jackson decided to coach the Lakers, and Winter left the Bulls to join him in Los Angeles. Even in Chicago, they always wondered what it would be like to have O'Neal as the apex of the triangle.

``That's gone pretty well,'' Winter said. ``He's the apex of the attack, but there again, I think there could be a lot of improvement there, too. We've tried to explain it to him.

``Coach handles him a lot better than I can. He might feel like why should I respect this little ol' guy? What does he know about basketball. I've only coached for 54 years.''

Said Cleamons: ``Shaq responds. I think Shaq has his own thoughts and ideas, but he understands people only want the best for him, so he just continues to work. He's kind of stubborn in his own right.

``If you look and pay attention, he tries things. Sometimes he's on his own timeline. But Shaq grew up in the military. He understands the chain of command, and he's going to give you what you're looking for.''

Winter was already at Chicago when Jackson was first hired to be the Bulls third assistant. He coached the Bulls summer league team in Los Angeles, and Jackson went to assist. A long-running friendship and coaching relationship was born out of those summer days at Loyola Marymount where Jackson was exposed to the triangle.

``He embraced it,'' Winter said. ``He liked the way we taught it and broke it down into drills. He was looking for a system of play that involved all five players, ballplayer movement with a purpose.''

When Jackson got the Bulls job, he installed the triangle. And Winters legacy was about to shift from the coach who took Kansas State to a pair of Final Fours and eight Big Eight titles, to the father of the triangle.

``I would have been long gone, long retired if Phil hadn't felt like this was the offense he wanted to develop,'' Winter said.

Their relationship has slowly changed, evolved over the years.

``We're very close,'' Winter said. ``I don't know if you'd call it a brother relationship, or a father-son relationship. He is more the big brother type to me, than my being the big brother to him.

``Phil is a very intelligent person and knows a lot about a lot of things. As Dennis Rodman once said, Phil Jackson is an authority on everything, and he pretty much is. So consequently, we debate a lot, argue a lot. And he likes that. It's kind of a special interchange.''

Jackson has embraced Winter even more than his offense.

``He's part mentor, part provocateur,'' Jackson said.

Jackson wrote the forward for ``Trial by Basketball, The Life and Times of Tex Winter,'' a 303-page biography written by Mark Bender that came out just last month.

Winter even finds fault with his own authorized biography, lamenting that he didn't get his galley changes back in time before the book was printed.

``That's all right, I don't think many people will be too interested in it anyway,'' said Winter, in typical modesty.

Winter left the Bulls because he felt he had a better chance of winning one more title here than in Chicago. If he gets it this year, could real retirement finally beckon?

He said it depends whether his health is going strong, being wanted, and feeling as if 54 years later, he can still contribute.

``I wouldn't make a decision on that until I see how this thing plays out,'' Winter said. ``Phil and I have been together a long time, and I'm not so sure at this point how much input I can have.''

CAPTION(S):

drawing

Drawing: (color) no caption (Tex Winter with Phil Jackson, on illustration of a clipboard)

Illustration by Eric Barrow