He started his coaching career straight out of college – during the Truman presidency. And he hasn’t taken a year off since.

During the Eisenhower regime, he coached Kansas State to national prominence.

As an NBA assistant, he won two championships while the first Bush was in office, and five more during Clinton’s term. Last June, for symmetry’s sake, he claimed his eighth title, this time with the younger Bush in the White House.

“I’ve coached longer than anyone in the history of the game,” says Tex Winter, who, for the record, began as an assistant at Kansas State in 1947.

When Gerald Ford was in the Oval Office in Washington, Winter was running the triangle offense in Evanston, where he served as Northwestern’s head basketball coach from 1973-78.

Winter learned the triangle — an offensive system emphasizing teamwork and spacing over set plays and isolation — while playing for coach Sam Berry at the University of Southern California in the 1940s. He’s made it his own during a 55-year career as a Division I and NBA coach.

When Winter arrived in Evanston, he brought the triple-post offense with him because, well, when you’re less talented than your opponents, you need to outsmart them.

“The system is very effective when you’re outmatched,” Winter says. “From that standpoint, it was a good choice.”

But with the exception of an 89-77 victory over NIT-champion Kentucky in 1975 and a 99-87 triumph over top-ranked Michigan in 1977, the triangle didn’t generate enough wins to satisfy Winter, who left NU with a 44-87 record.

While his victory total wasn’t great, Winter remembers his time in Evanston fondly.

“It’s an experience that I enjoyed very much,” he said. “It was a tough situation, and we had a hard time recruiting. But that made it pretty nice, because I was working with an intelligent, fine group of young men.

“I didn’t have to get involved in some of the nasty recruiting, because we couldn’t get those kids in school here.”

While he did nab significant talent at NU — Billy McKinney, the program’s all-time leading scorer, was his first recruit — the competitive coach couldn’t handle the dearth of victories.

“It was tough on him at that time,” says McKinney, now the executive vice president of the Seattle Sonics. “He had a tremendous belief that the program could be successful.”

Adds Winter: “When I went to Northwestern, I was third or fourth on the all-time (college) wins list. When I left, I think I was 14th or 15th.”

Winter had earned most of his victories from 1954-68, a 15-year run at Kansas State. In 1959, he was named United Press International Coach of the Year, and he led his squad to the top ranking in both the Associated Press and UPI polls, the first time that feat had been accomplished.

In 1958, Winter ended the career of the most dominant college player ever — that’s what he’ll tell you, anyway.

Winter’s (Kansas State) Wildcats defeated archrival Kansas on the road, 79-75, to clinch the Big Eight championship. At the conclusion of that season, Jayhawks star Wilt Chamberlain left college to sign a professional contract with the Harlem Globetrotters.

“I’ve always claimed I ran Wilt out of the league,” Winter says. “I never told him that.”

In 1964, Winter and Kansas State nearly prevented the beginning of a dynasty, falling 90-84 in the national semifinals to John Wooden’s UCLA team, which then beat Duke for Wooden’s first national championship.

“It was a game we should have won,” Winter said. “That might have made a major difference in what happened at UCLA, and at K-State.”

Winter left Kansas State for the University of Washington, where he stayed three years, before a short head coaching stint in the NBA with the San Diego Rockets from 1971-73.

After his five years in Evanston, Winter served as head coach at Long Beach State for five years before spending two years as an assistant at Louisiana State.

And he never took a year off.

In 1985, Winter began a 14-year, six-championship stint with the Chicago Bulls. In 1999, he left the Bulls to join head coach Phil Jackson as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers coaching staff, where he’s been a part of the team that has won the last two league titles.

“It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve made,” Winter says of leaving Chicago. “I love the Bulls. They treated me with a great deal of respect. But as a coach, sometimes it’s better to go where you have a chance to win.”

Winter also wanted to continue working with Jackson, the master pupil whom he had mentored since Jackson joined the Bulls as a third assistant coach in 1987, before taking over the team in 1989.

“That’s when he was indoctrinated into the (triangle) style of play, and he liked it,” Winter said of Jackson’s first season in Chicago. “I’m fortunate he did, or I’d have retired a long time ago.”

Unlike Jackson, who had a highly publicized split with the Bulls front office, Winter harbors no bitterness toward his former team. Winter watched every minute of the Bulls’ 53-point defeat against Minnesota last week, “and I darn near cried,” he says.

Despite a sizable age difference — he turns 80 in February — Winter maintains he has no trouble relating to the modern professional athlete.

“You’ve got to earn their respect,” he says. “Once they understand that you can help them, they respond in a very positive manner.

“If they understand the history of the game, if they’ve read my resume … Good Lord, if no one else, certainly I deserve their respect.”

The same was true when he was at NU in the mid-1970s.

“When Tex said things, you’d be really foolish not to listen,” McKinney says. “He used to remind us that he could forget more basketball in a day than we could learn in a lifetime.”

Of special importance in the egalitarian triangle offense is a coach’s relationship with his star players. Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were the leaders of the Bulls — now Winter coaches Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.

“All the stars — Michael, Pippen, Shaq and Kobe — they can sabotage the triangle if they want to,” Winter says. “The key in the pros is to win your players over, especially the superstars.”

With nearly 60 years of successful coaching behind him, Winter has earned consideration for the Basketball Hall of Fame.

He’s been nominated on four separate occasions, never earning enshrinement.

“I think (I’ll get in), maybe after I’m dead,” he says. “I’d like to be in it. The fact that I’ve survived as long as I have warrants some recognition. For my friends and family, as much as myself, I’d like to be honored.”

McKinney thinks Winter deserves the recognition.

“There’s no question about it,” McKinney says. “His accomplishments, his longevity speaks for itself. He’s done his craft as well as anyone could do it.”

But the nominations alone say something about Winter’s career.

“It’s an honor to have been nominated as much as I have,” Winter says. “Maybe it’s a little embarrassing.

“Someone in that committee must not like me. I guess in 55 years of coaching you’re bound to make a few enemies.”

In 55 years, you also start to slow down — at least a little bit.

Winter has scaled back his coaching this season, teaching the triangle offense in practice and traveling with the Lakers only when he wants to.

And while he feels his coaching career winding down, Winter isn’t sure how he would endure a year without basketball.

“It has been part of my life for so long,” Winter says. “It’s the only thing I know, the only thing I’ve done.”

But maybe it’s time to take a year off. There’s a first time for everything.

“This might be my last year,” he says. “Fifty-five years is a long time to stay on a bucking horse.”