Now Is the Winter of Discontent

Tex Winter assumed the season would come when Laker players might be suspicious of offensive concepts they didn’t understand, of roles they hadn’t played before, of a system that rewarded skill and effort rather than reputation.

He figured it would happen last season, though, the first for Coach Phil Jackson and his Chicago Bull-bred assistants, Winter among them.

This season, no one saw it coming.

“I’d have to admit frustration,” Winter said as if he were behind a metal table in an interrogation room.

Jackson, though, has been all narrowed eyes, bemused smiles and leftover timeouts.

“I think that’s been one of his strengths,” Winter said. “But I actually see a little more concern in him this year than I ever have.”

Pressed for details, Winter passed.

“Just, you know, information I’m privy to,” he said.

It has been trying for them all. As it turns out, there is no plan, other than to run Winter’s offense and play Jackson’s defense and hope nobody gets hit in the mouth on national television. It is a strange way to run a title defense.

Summers for Winter are spent mulling the coming season, and whether he’ll continue coaching. One of these will have to be his last after all, now 53-plus since his first. A few weeks ago, some in the organization measured Winter’s frustration and wondered if he would get through this one.

He hasn’t actually considered leaving, Winter said.

“No, not really,” he said. “I’m not a quitter.”

Told that, at 79, it’s technically not quitting, it’s retiring, he laughed and the corners of his eyes turned upward.

“I mean during the season,” he said.

With every defeat on the court, every well-placed slight off it, the summer nears. Before he knows it, Winter will have his choice again.

“I’m not making the decision yet,” Winter said. “When I’m ready to make the decision, I suppose I’ll call a press conference and let people know.”

Meantime, Winter sits to Jackson’s left. He knows Jackson better than anyone in Los Angeles. And while they are there, together, Jackson left leg folded over right leg, Winter shouting incessantly about guards who carry the ball, as if some don’t, Winter figures he can help solve this thing.

He saw a lot of weirdness in Chicago in the last decade, when the Bulls won six championships, and it wasn’t all Dennis Rodman. So, if this Laker season has turned into what Winter and Jackson believed last season would look more like, well, then that’s what’s there for them and nothing else.

“Well, you know, maybe last year--and I think Phil would agree with this-- when we took this job last year, when Phil took the job, it was with the idea that we felt like with Shaq [O’Neal] and with Kobe [Bryant], particularly, and with the other guys, [Rick] Fox and [Robert] Horry and [Glen] Rice, that we had a chance to win, and maybe a chance to win it all,” Winter said. “But we didn’t anticipate that we’d win it all. And, actually, I think it’s just amazing that we did.”

Particularly in hindsight, one could presume, particularly in light of this very muddled season, blurred again by Wednesday’s lackluster defeat in Philadelphia.

“Well,” Winter said, agreeing. “So, maybe going into this season because we won it last year, everyone, maybe including ourselves, maybe the expectations were too high. We just weren’t realistic about it.”

It is the fix in which the Lakers find themselves today, when they continue their six-game trip, on which their uneven basketball is only the second-biggest story. The biggest is the incessant feud between O’Neal and Bryant, which screams from every sports page in every town they play.

Last week, O’Neal said bygones would be bygones. The Lakers assumed he meant in Los Angeles.

Whatever, it’s one more fire for Jackson to stomp on, or let alone, or stoke, depending on the sway of the day’s feng shui.

“Phil, I think the way I put it best, and I’m certainly not going to be critical of him or his coaching, but there’s method in his madness,” Winter said. “He’s very calculating. He does a lot of things that are just unorthodox in his approach. He does a lot of things the average fan, particularly, and even in my case, question a great deal. But I’ve been with him long enough to know that there’s reasons he does these things. It’s worked out pretty well for him.”

Like most, Winter gives Jackson the benefit of his doubt.

“Everybody reflects back to those six championships,” he said. “They don’t realize that, if they lived it, as we did, they’d recognize things weren’t always rosy there either, by any stretch of the imagination. I felt like we were very fortunate to win a lot of those championships. Just like I felt like last year we were fortunate.”

If it sounds as if every championship, one after the other, flat sneaks up on him, then Winter shrugged.

“Well, they call me the pessimist,” he said. “I say I’m not a pessimist at all. I see positive. I see negative. But I do consider myself a realist and a fundamentalist. And when I don’t see things that I feel like are necessary for a team to be successful, I become very concerned about it, much more so than Phil does. But he lived the pro life, he played the pro life, I think he can get into their minds a whole lot better than I can.”

All right then, can this, these Lakers, be fixed? Realistically speaking?

“I think it can be.”

How?

“Well, we’ve got to get people well, No. 1,” he said. “Even then, it’s not going to happen just automatically. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Physically we have to be able to put forth that effort. We can’t have people out all the time, not practicing because of injuries or someone’s resting or something’s wrong with them.”

And the rest?

“I think Phil feels like they’ll work it out, that it’ll be worked out.”

And, what about Winter, the realist?

“Well, I’m, uh, optimistic about it happening,” he said. “I don’t know. I think it’s something we’re going to have to see, in order for us to get on the kind of roll we need to get on now to get back into the home-court advantage picture. That’s what it’s all about.”

*

PROBLEMS

ON DEFENSE

The Lakers have given up more than 100 points in the two games since O’Neal returned from injury. D8

TONIGHT

at Charlotte

4:30

(5:30, Ch. 9)

REUNION

Larry Brown, who had some success with the Clippers, will get a look at his old team tonight. D8