Tex Winter stands in the middle of the Berto Center court, and all eyes are on him. Most of the faces are as inquisitive as they are young, because only a few know what it is that happens within the Bulls’ “triangle offense.”
Winter, a Bulls assistant and self-proclaimed basketball “lifer,” is 75. Teaching is one of his strong suits, so clearly he relishes times like these. He talks. He demonstrates. He yells. He shakes his head. He starts all over again.
Two weeks already have passed, and only a few days remain before the Bulls’ season opener against the Utah Jazz. The players, at least those unfamiliar with the triangle offense, are absorbing a crash course in its basics. As a teacher, Winter is too accomplished to get frustrated, but he realizes time is not a friend. There is still so much to learn.
“I think they’ll make progress,” he says. “It’s just a question of going over things–repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s a matter of repetition until it becomes an instinctive reaction. The learning process sets its own pace. For some of these guys, they’ll pick it up rather rapidly and they’re in good shape. Other guys may never pick it up. We just have to sort things out.”
In its very basic terms, the triangle–or “triple-post” offense–in-volves all five players sharing the ball and moving. Players have to learn how to react to situations and let their passing and movement find and exploit weak spots in an opposing defense.
Ron Harper, Toni Kukoc, Randy Brown, Bill Wennington and Dickey Simpkins know what’s going on. So do Matt Steigenga and Rusty LaRue, quick learners who had been exposed to how the Bulls play over the previous two seasons. Newcomers such as Brent Barry, Andrew Lang and Charles Jones have grasped some of the finer points of the offense. For the others it might as well be trigonometry.
Winter, in his 53rd year as a coach, is patient. Under these circumstances he has no choice: Michael Jordan’s retirement precipitated an 80 percent turnover in the Bulls’ starting lineup, and the first work stoppage in NBA history delayed training camp by three months, and then reduced it to two weeks.
“I hope the players who are in this learning process understand it takes time,” Winter says. “I do. I’m patient with them. At the same time, I’m going to point out mistakes that are made because that’s the only way they can learn. They have to realize what they’re doing wrong and make corrections. Those bad habits a lot of them got playing individual basketball are hard to break.
“It’s a difficult thing for them to understand that we’re interested in seeing who does fit into the scheme of things. We’re not going to adjust too much to take care of individual abilities. We don’t feel we have to do that. The system itself gives them that opportunity once they learn it.”
It sounds a little like the selling job Winter did on Jordan. Though he joined the coaching staff in 1985, the Bulls didn’t really implement Winter’s triple-post offense until the 1989-90 season, when Phil Jackson took over from Doug Collins as head coach.
Jackson was a fan of the offense; Red Holzman used a variation of it with the Knicks when Jackson played for them nearly 30 years ago. He saw it opening up more possibilities for the other Bulls as well as Jordan. The key was convincing Jordan that it would work to everyone’s benefit, including his own.
“We’re sort of in the same situation we were in eight years ago,” Winter says. “It was a question of Phil selling Michael and Scottie Pippen, two pretty good basketball players who Phil felt would have to sacrifice themselves individually in order for us to win championships. Phil was able to do that.
“It took them some time, but Pippen was one of the fastest learners I’ve ever coached and Michael has such a tremendous grasp of the game that it really wasn’t that difficult with those players.”
The Bulls have six titles to show for it. Winter says it’s even more important to have complementary players who understand the offense, such as Steigenga and LaRue. It was the triangle, after all, that helped make useful players out of John Paxson, Steve Kerr and Scott Burrell; none was going to create his own shot, but each could make shots that came to him within the offense.
LaRue says his background as a college quarterback at Wake Forest came in handy. LaRue spent most of last season on the Bulls’ injured list, but he practiced with the team, and Winter was impressed with how quickly he grasped the intricacies of the offense.
“There are all kinds of options you can run, but there’s basically five spots on the floor that you have to learn,” LaRue says. “Out of those five spots, there’s a series of actions. You should be able to do them in your sleep. You have to know what everybody on the floor does because you can be on any of those spots.
“What really helped me is being a college quarterback because I had to know what all 11 guys were doing on every play. You have to think not what I do but more in the context of what the offense is trying to achieve.”
Barry appears to be learning. He said he didn’t need to be sold on the offense, given the success the Bulls have had running it.
“The main thing you have to do is take the time to study it,” Barry says. “As much as we do some things and run through the repetitions, to go back and look at the paperwork Tex has provided for me and look at the game films, you can absorb things a lot quicker. I’m a visual learner. We have to get to where it’s second nature.
“Michael, Scottie, Dennis Rodman–they ran this offense to perfection. Every time you thought you had them, something else came up and they’d get something easy. Right now we’re kind of at a starting point. We’re kind of like Keystone Kops running into each other.”
That’s why Winter has concentrated on the four basic passes within the triangle.
“Some of our specialties will have to come later as they learn the basic concepts and principles,” Winter says. “But they’ve been exposed to an awful lot of basketball in a very short period of time. We do that purposely because we want to see who can respond to an overload–who can learn quickly and pick up things fast. That’s very important to us.”
The learning process doesn’t end with the players. New coach Tim Floyd has been letting Winter run practice so he can get a feel for how to teach the offense once Winter retires. Floyd has been a student of the triangle offense since his days as a college coach, occasionally traveling to Chicago to learn the basics from its inventor, whom he was delighted to retain on the Bulls’ staff.
“It’s one thing seeing it on the chalkboard, but it’s something entirely different seeing it out on the floor,” Floyd says. “It’s important to hear Coach Winter talk about the key teaching points as they develop on the floor.”
Floyd has been taping practices for future reference once Winter does retire.
“If Coach Winter had walked away from this game, I would have lost all of this,” Floyd says.
It might be the best thing the Bulls have going for them.
