CHICAGO – Before he became the coach of four Warriors championship teams, and long before he helped revolutionize basketball by pushing the boundaries of offense, Steve Kerr had three jobs for the 1990s Chicago Bulls:
Knock down enough shots to space the floor for Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, make the correct reads in Chicago’s famed triangle offense and help get any newcomers up to speed in coach Phil Jackson’s complicated attack.
“Whenever we would get new players, we would have to help them adapt to the new offense,” Kerr told the Bay Area News Group earlier this month. “Sometimes, I would help the new guys understand the nuances of the triangle, and I’d shoot with them and give them tips.”
So it was little surprise that one day, the triangle’s architect, Tex Winter, delivered a prophecy to the point guard.
“You should coach someday,” Winter, an assistant on Jackson’s staff, told Kerr. “You should teach some of this stuff.”
Kerr followed the legendary coach’s advice in more ways than just becoming a coach.
He still endorses elements of Winter’s tactics, and Kerr’s interpersonal approach is reminiscent of Winter’s stern, yet thoughtful philosophy.
It has served Kerr well during the second act of a basketball career that will see him coach his 11th and perhaps final Christmas Day game today against the Dallas Mavericks. Kerr, 60, is in the last year of his contract, and will not entertain talks of a possible extension until after the season.
Though Winter died in 2018, his influence still lives on in Kerr.
“He was a man of principle, a man of humor,” Kerr said. “He loved the game, and lived an incredible basketball life at every level.”
“Incredible” almost undersells Winter’s hoops journey.
Raised in Northeast Texas during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Morice Fredrick “Tex” Winter and his family moved cross-country to Huntington Beach when he was a teenager.
“I lived through when we hardly had enough,” Tex once told Chicago sportswriter Sam Smith. “I don’t forget.”
Smith recounted how a young Winter would spend hours collecting boxes for a local baker in exchange for the day-old bread that would feed his family.
“He grew up at a time where you didn’t waste anything,” Kerr said. “That sense of waste, of material possessions, all of that impacted his life and his coaching. He believed in being really efficient as a human being, because he grew up in a time where you had to be efficient just to survive.”
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Winter enrolled at USC and received his basketball education from Sam Barry, who in the late 1940s taught him an early version of the triangle.
Over the next 60 years, Winter became a head coach at power conference colleges — including Marquette and Washington — was hired by Bay Area legend Pete Newell to lead the Houston Rockets, and eventually settled in as a trusted NBA assistant with Jackson on dynastic Bulls and Lakers teams.
ORG XMIT: LAKERS_BRAINS_21F.jpg (Sports, El Segundo, 05-19-04) Mug of Lakers Assistant Coach Tex Winter at HealthSouth Training Center in El Segundo, Calif., May 19, 2004. For a profile on the Lakers’ assistant coaches. (The Press-Enterprise/Silvia Flores)
So what was it about the triangle that made Winter so coveted?
In an era where many offenses were rudimentary – unbothered by having multiple players standing next to one another and content to have a single player dominate the ball – the triangle dared to create a more egalitarian version of the sport.
“It affords every player on the team the opportunity and ability to utilize their talents,” Winter told the Chicago Tribune. “For some reason, they try to make it more complicated and don’t keep it nearly as simple as it is.”
All five players had to stand at least 15 to 18 feet away from one another, creating three-man”‘triangles” and running complicated passing and cutting patterns. And whether it was Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal or Kobe Bryant, even the stars had to follow the rules.
Viewed through modern eyes accustomed to pull-up 30-footers and five-out spacing, the triangle appears downright archaic – especially with its seven non-negotiables that fly in the face of today’s free-flowing game.
A few of them include – thanks to a 1993 guide from the Chicago Tribune: stress the inside power game, and running sets with rebounding position in mind.
But compared to what most of the NBA was doing pre-Steph Curry, it was futuristic.
It took until 2011 for Winter to be enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, but his peers had long recognized his brilliance.
Bulls GM Jerry Krause called Winter “the finest offensive mind in basketball,” and Jackson said Winter possessed a “mind of the basketball gods.” Jordan dubbed Winter a “pioneer and true student of the game.”
“That level of complexity was not something that was super common in the ‘80s or ‘90s in offenses, and I think that’s what made the triangle unique,” NBA historian Ben Taylor of Thinking Basketball said. “I also think I felt this way at the time, that the spacing was an advantage.”
The spacing was an advantage in an earlier era, and many of its pillars are still held up by Kerr … to a degree.
“We run the principles of the triangle, and our split-cut action is all based on the triangle, and some of our high post split stuff could be based on the triangle,” Kerr said, before adding, “But it is just very different now.”
Winter’s scheme, revolutionary for its time, was played in an NBA where the 18-foot jump shot was still much en vogue. Many of the classic sets run for Jordan and Pippen would be considered obsolete.
But the fundamentals Winter unflinchingly supported? Kerr believes his team, which ranks near the bottom of the NBA in turnovers, could use those.
“Tex was a stickler for fundamentals, for playing sound basketball,” Kerr said, shaking his head. “I think he would really struggle with today’s game, honestly, because there’s so much that’s different about today’s game that would drive him crazy. I frequently say to myself after I see a one-handed pass, I say to myself or my other coaches, ‘Tex Winter would roll over in his grave.’”
1/22/99 SPT 4917 BULLS Bulls assistant coach Tex Winter listens to players during the intrasquad scrimmage Friday January 22, 1999. (Tribune photo by Wes Pope) (Chicago Bulls, Practice, Team, Groups) ORG XMIT: 4917
Scheme is not the only part of Winter’s philosophy that Kerr has drawn from.
In an era where fire and brimstone reigned and verbal abuse from coach to player was the norm, Winter and Jackson’s more measured approach has stood the test of time.
Though Kerr is more than willing to raise his voice at players, he also knows that coaching the modern player requires a heightened level of sensitivity. That duality was expressed neatly last week, when he shouted at Draymond Green during Monday night’s game and took the blame for the exchange on Wednesday.
Critiquing a careless turnover or dumb shot? Perfectly acceptable. Attacking an athlete’s character? That now crosses the line.
But that satisfaction of helping a player become what Kerr calls “the best versions of themselves” brought Winter great satisfaction.
“One of the best parts of coaching is when you say something to a player and it clicks, and you can see it’s actually helped them,” Kerr said. “That’s the most satisfying part of this profession, but it’s equally as satisfying whether I’m talking to Draymond or whether I’m talking to (rookie) Will Richard.”
Dealing with strife has always been a part of coaching, even with the high-winning and high-drama Bulls and Warriors dynasties.
But neither of those teams went through a rough patch like the current-day Warriors, who hover around .500. Such tribulations have hidden the kind of personal growth that Kerr has undergone as a coach, even if the record does not indicate it.
“You know, in some ways, ignorance was bliss,” Kerr said of his previous championship runs. “You know, we had a really talented team, and I had my ideas, and those were working and I didn’t look back. But now, I have to look back and reckon with some of the mistakes we’re making, and some of the things that other teams are doing against us.”
The Warriors – and by extension Kerr – have been forced to adapt to the changing league. But oftentimes, the solution to new problems is found by looking to the past, to Kerr’s days in Chicago and his revered former coach.
“While you adapt, you can’t forget all the fundamentals and the basics,” Kerr said. “That’s where you turn back to the Tex Winters of the game, and say these guys, their principles, their ideals, will never fade.”
Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green #23 talks with head coach Steve Kerr after fouling out in the fourth quarter of their NBA game against the Memphis Grizzlies at the Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)