Lakernoise

Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” was right. Most people can’t handle the truth. Most people are so fearful of the truth, they need to get drunk just to slur a few words of it. If they dare speak the truth, they feel they have to get up on the pulpit and preach it. That’s about the only way they can manage to deliver it. They definitely don’t want to look people in the eye and say what they think.
If Tex Winter ever drank, it wasn’t more than a drop. And the last place you’d ever find him was in a pulpit.

Tex wore the truth as a natural, everyday part of his attire. Like an old pair of basketball shoes. And he delivered the truth dead on, at eye level.
The truth was the essence of who he was. He was aware that what he had to say could be hurtful to players and associates. He never went out of his way to hurt someone. But he never held back too much either. He usually just said what he thought. And he delivered what he thought in self-deprecating manner.
He didn’t use the truth to adorn himself, to make himself look better. He simply provided feedback. He told people what he thought. The truth is always gold for any of us, but in a fantasy world like the NBA it proved a wealth beyond any other. The players are immensely wealthy, which means that about all they hear are lies from the people around them.
They never got that from Tex. Whether the player was Michael Jordan of the Bulls or Luke Walton or Kobe Bryant of the Lakers, he got the hard stuff right from Tex’s mouth. MJ, you see, could never throw a really competent chest pass, and it was Tex who told him so, just as it was Tex who believed in Kobe when so many others wanted to take him down.
As Tex lies in a Kansas hospital fighting for his life after a stroke, I hope NBA people stop and contemplate just what he has meant to them, meant to the game. I hope all the players who ever played for him stop and think about what his honesty did for the game itself.
Ditto for the coaches who gained so much from association with him.
I hope they stop and think today about Tex’s honesty.
And while I’m offering that advice for everyone else, I’m going to try and take a bit of it myself. Tex spent a lot of time trying to educate me. I’m sure he often thought I was a lost cause, but he never lost patience with me.
The things he told me often got him into trouble. And team “officials” were always trying to get him not to tell me the things he did. But he never wavered in the face of that pressure.
The truth has a sting to it, a deeply burning sting. Tex knew that. He knew that when he said certain things, it was going to cost him.
The great irony of his life is that if he hadn’t told the truth, he might have played the political games that made it much easier to get into the Hall of Fame. But if he hadn’t been such a truth-teller, Tex wouldn’t have been so deserving of Hall of Fame recognition. And, boy, is he ever deserving.
Yes, he was a great coach, and his old-school triangle offense has defined success in the modern game of hoops.
But his primary product was the truth.
And so, Tex Winter is simply too good for the Hall of Fame. It’s a place populated with frauds and credit-takers.
Tex is in another Hall of Fame, one a million times more exclusive and far more important. He’s in the truth-tellers Hall of Fame, where the population is only the very few truly good ones.
The rest of us, we can’t even walk through that hall. We have to admire it from afar.
If there’s one thing I could say to Tex today it would be, “Rest easy. You will always be remembered, always be treasured.” For if there’s one thing about the truth, it’s just like Tex himself. It never gets old. It’s always vital.
I want to close with some observations from Chip Schaefer, trainer for the Bulls and consultant for the Lakers and Phil Jackson. Schaefer always has great perspective on the many treasures in life, such as Tex. He made these comments to me some years ago in an interview.
Chip Schaefer: “Tex is a few years younger than my parents and a product of that Depression era. To say that he is frugal would be an understatement. Johnny Bach used to call him penurious. I think that’s a very apt description of him. But I think Tex in a lot of ways is the way we all should be. He doesn’t like to see things get wasted. He takes that attitude at the dinner table, too. If there’s a little bit of meat on your bone, he may just pick up your steak bone and finish it off for you… Basketball is his absolute passion in life. He’s 73 years old (87 now), and that’s what keeps him going. There’s times when he’ll look tired, and I’ll wonder if he has the energy for it. Then all of a sudden practice will start, and he’s out here barking at these guys like he’s coaching the K-State freshman team and it’s 1948. Tex has three or four real passions in life. One of them’s basketball. Certainly one of them’s food. He really enjoys his finances. He pores over the business section of the paper as intensely as he does the sports section. He’s a real joy. I hope he keeps on going.”