Lost In The Triangle

Sporting News, The, Nov 8, 1999 by Mark Heisler

New Coach Phil Jackson's system might as well be called the Bermuda Triangle the way it's being run by the Lakers

So Phil Jackson arrives in Los Angeles with eight rings, three assistants and Tex Winter's Triangle Offense, hoping to get a do-over of his triumphs in Chicago.

And, Lakers insiders forecast a bumpy transition-starting with Jackson, himself.

"They're going into remedial reading," Jackson declares as camp opens. "They're going into junior high school and their secondary education as professional players. And when they learn the system, then maybe we'll know how good they are. Maybe in December or so, we'll really get it down, we'll have a basketball team we can judge whether they'll be champions or not."

By December, Jackson may be ready to break them up and start over. As the season opens, the Lakers aren't looking so hot running the Triangle Offense or doing much of anything else for that matter.

The new offense, which stresses ball movement, looks a lot like the old one with the ball going into Shaquille O'Neal and everyone standing around watching him.

At this point, ironically enough, O'Neal is the only Laker who remains effective as ever, while the rest don't have a clue.

The power forward position is being contested by A.C. Green, 3 5, and converted small forward Robert Horry. It probably is no vote of confidence in either that Jackson has been heard pining for Dennis Rodman.

Everybody in the Lakers organization, having seen Rodman in action, is deathly afraid to take him on, and even owner Jerry Buss, who championed Rodman's cause last season, is leery, so they're not that desperate ... yet.

Then there is Kobe Bryant, who suffered a broken bone in his fight hand in the first exhibition game, missed the rest of the preseason and is out for the first three weeks or so of the regular season. Bryant was showing such an inclination to try to beat his man off the dribble that Jackson calls his injury "a blessing in disguise in some ways." The hope? Bryant would learn how to run the Triangle by watching new team-mate Ron Harper.

By the midpoint of the exhibition season, Jackson had moved beyond remedial school metaphors, noting the Lakers "are all autistic in some form or fashion."

"I don't mean to say that as a snide remark towards a certain population in our society," he says, "but they (Lakers) have a limitation of their attention span. A lot of it is probably due to too much rap music going in their ears or coming out of their being. So, they need to get a focal point that lasts longer than a TV commercial or one short, 15-second span."

OK, so now the Lakers need to work on their musical taste, too, when they're not trying to learn the Triangle.

Oh, and find some heart, too.

"You could use a lot of excuses," Jackson notes after the Lakers went belly-up in a 14-point exhibition loss to their division rival, Portland, "but I thought the Lakers punked out tonight."

If nothing else, the new era is going to be candidly brutal.

Jackson also winces publicly at O'Neal's free-throw shooting, which is more horrible than usual. Winter owns the task of teaching O'Neal the art of free-throw shooting.

Jackson notes that it took a while for the Bulls to learn the system, and Chicago's stars were more experienced than O'Neal and Bryant when Jackson and Winter installed the triangle with the Bulls in the fall of 1989.

"We didn't get to the Finals," Jackson says. "We got to the conference finals in the East and took Detroit to seven games."

These days, Jackson cautions people not to expect too much too soon, or anything like the Bulls' six titles in the '90s. In Lakerdom, right now, they're not working on a dynasty or even the first title. They're just trying to make it to Christmas to see what they've got.

If the system is failing by then, management has told Jackson that it will make personnel changes. (Glen Rice for Scottie Pippen? Stay tuned.)

In fact, even if NBA players treat it as if it were hieroglyphics, the triangle is nothing but a motion offense, based on the principle of forming and reforming triangles on the court.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"There's nothing mysterious about it," Winter says. "It's an offense that's been in basketball for many, many years. It has evolved over the years. It's adjustable to the personnel that you have. We base our offensive philosophy on several principles."

Could you describe them, he is asked.

"No," interjects O'Neal, lying on a training table next to Winter.

"The first principle is penetration," Winter says. "That's where Shaq would come in, of course, because the easiest penetration, we feel, is to throw the ball inside. To help you do that, the floor has to be spaced properly and the ball has to be moved properly.

"The second principle then would be spacing. We're fanatics on 15-18-20 foot spacing on the court between players.

"The third principle is player and ball movement--but with a purpose. Another principle is strong offensive board play on all shots. We stress that a great deal. Our teams in Chicago were first, second or third in offensive rebounding in all those years that we won championships.