Though his sweet shot is ‘non-existent,’ USC great Brian Winters a basketball lifer
Editor’s note: This story is part of The State’s series “SC Sports: Where are the stars now?“
Brian Winters spoke from a hotel room in San Diego. Later that night he’d head into the temporary office, the 12,414-seat Viejas Arena on San Diego State’s campus. A few days later, the work scene shifted to Indianapolis before heading back to gyms in Colorado, Washington, Nebraska and Utah.
“Bouncing from one to another,” he said.
NBA scout life means constant travel. You’re studying one player in one area of the country one day and another in another state the next. For Winters, though, it’s just another chapter in a basketball-filled life. The 67-year-old Indiana Pacers scout has been criss-crossing America since 1971-72, his debut season at the University of South Carolina that just happened to align with a Gamecocks program freshly removed from the Atlantic Coast Conference and free to roam.
“Coach (Frank) McGuire still had so many contacts,” Winters recently told The State, a few hours before taking in San Diego State vs. Boise State. “He could schedule games with Al McGuire at Marquette, go to Chicago and play doubleheaders, go out to San Francisco and play in the Cable Car Classic.
“Go here, go there.”
Like many of USC’s top players from the McGuire era, Winters was recruited to the Gamecocks out of New York. The Archbishop Molloy product — the same school that produced Kevin Joyce and Bob Carver — scored 1,079 points over a career hampered by injuries and a bout with with mononucleosis.
The NCAA didn’t allow freshmen to play varsity in 1970-71, a rule Winters believes was beneficial to his long-term success. He was able to cut his teeth on Carolina’s freshman team.
“Donnie Walsh was my coach,” Winters said of McGuire’s assistant. “And in the recruiting process, I asked Donnie, ‘Where are you going to play me as a freshman?’ And he said, ‘Where do you want to play?’ And I said, ‘I want to be the point guard.’
“Because I knew I had to go from being a wing player in high school to having better guard skills so I could a be more versatile player. So I played point guard all my freshman year. And that helped me on the varsity level.”
The 6-foot-4 Winters was taken 12th overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1974 NBA Draft and went on to make two all-star teams, both as a Milwaukee Buck. The Bucks retired his No. 32 jersey in 1983.
At 4.1 a game over nine seasons, Winters has the highest assist average of any former Gamecock to play in the NBA. Only Alex English (21.4) has a higher scoring average than Winters’ 16.4. His game was ahead of its time. Michael Jordan, in a 2005 interview with Cigar Aficionado magazine, called Winters the best “pure shooter” he’s ever seen. Put that stroke in today’s NBA, where 3-point records are being broken every season, and Winters would really thrive, English said.
“Oh, he’d be awesome,” English said. “Brian was a great shooter, real smooth and pretty accurate. Back then, they only had a 3-point shot at the end of his career. He would have been one of the most accurate 3-point shooters. That’s what kind of player he was.”
Retired from playing by 1983, Winters began his coaching career as an assistant for Princeton in 1984. He was back in the NBA two years later, on staff for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He’s been associated with the league ever since, serving as an assistant for the Atlanta Hawks, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors and Charlotte Bobcats. He was the Vancouver Grizzlies’ inaugural head coach and later was in charge of the Warriors (as an interim in 2001-02) and the WNBA’s Indiana Fever.
He’s into his sixth season of a second stint as a Pacers scout.
“I do miss coaching,” said Winters, who went 36-148 with the Grizzlies and Warriors, and 78-58 with three playoff appearances with the Fever. “When you coach, you have skin in the game. You either win or you lose. You’re trying to beat somebody and it’s competitive. But what I do in college basketball, I just evaluate players. I’m not trying to win the game or lose the game. I’m not in that mode. So it’s like I’ll watch games and I’ll just be watching players and see if they’re good enough to play on the NBA level.
“I miss the competition and playing and coaching. But I’m still around basketball. I still enjoy watching the games. The travel gets a little old, but it keeps me around basketball, which has always been my first love in life. So that part’s good.”
Winters is based out of Denver and is in charge of scouting the West and parts of the Midwest for the Pacers. Indiana, a regular playoff contender, rarely has a high draft pick. This makes player evaluation all that more important. Recent finds that Winters takes partial credit for include Fresno State’s Paul George (taken 10th overall in 2010), Texas’s Myles Turner (taken 11th in 2015) and UCLA’s Aaron Holiday (taken 23rd overall in 2018).
“I’m not the only one who chooses these players or ranks and rates them,” Winters said. “My job now is to find the best players we can find for the Indiana Pacers at our particular pick. And I think we’ve done, as a group, a pretty good job of it.”
Schedule and location make it difficult for Winters to travel back much to his alma mater. His USC days, though, stay fresh on his mind. He remembers the “avid fans” who treated that golden age of Gamecock basketball “extremely well.”
“The people were tremendous to us,” Winters said. “We had a great fan base. We won a lot of big games.”
Now, Winters just attends the big games. He walks into arenas with a pen and notepad. His sneakers stay in the bag.
“My shot is non-existent at the moment,” he said with a laugh. “I hardly ever pick a ball up.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 7:11 AM.
