Triangle offense
Its basic ideas were initially established by Hall of Fame coach Sam Barry at the University of Southern California.
[1] His system was further developed by former Houston Rockets and Kansas State University basketball head coach Tex Winter, who played for Barry in the late 1940s.
The system's most important feature is the sideline triangle created by the center, who stands at the low post, the forward at the wing, and the guard at the corner.
The desired initial option in the offense is to pass to the strong-side post player on the block who is in good scoring position.
The advantage to the first option is there are so many weapons to attack the defense it opens up a lot of freedom and ability to score effectively.
Winter initially wanted to teach the triangle offense to Doug Collins, who the Bulls hired as head coach ahead of the 1986–87 season.
[4][5] When Jackson became the head coach of the Chicago Bulls before the start of the 1989–1990 NBA season, he and Winter originally installed the triangle offense in an attempt to subvert the Jordan Rules strategy employed by their Eastern Conference rivals, the Detroit Pistons.
The following year, however, Chicago finished the 1990–1991 NBA season with a then-franchise best 61–21 record, good for first place in the East, then swept the archrival Pistons 4–0 in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals.
Jordan, back at the helm for the team in his first full season since coming out of retirement, won his fourth NBA MVP award.
Jackson installed the triangle offense again when he started coaching the Lakers in the 1999–2000 season, with Winter once again serving as an assistant on his staff.
With Bryant and Gasol running the triangle offense, the Lakers made the NBA Finals three straight times and won in 2009 and 2010.
In 1996, former Jackson assistant Jim Cleamons took over as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, but only lasted until early in the 1997–98 season, when general manager Don Nelson fired him.
Cleamons' triangle failed to click with the Mavericks' players, and after Nelson became head coach, the team abandoned it in favor of his Nellie Ball offense.
Similarly, in 1993, Quinn Buckner tried to implement the triangle without success during his brief coaching career in Dallas, finishing his lone season with a 13–69 record.
After Tim Floyd replaced Jackson as Bulls head coach in 1998, he was asked by general manager Jerry Krause to use the triangle offense, and even retained Winter as an assistant for one season.
However, Krause had infamously dismantled the championship team, and an inexperienced Bulls squad finished with only a 13–37 record in the lockout-shortened 1999 season.
Paxson soon hired Scott Skiles, who promptly abandoned the triangle in favor of a more defensive-oriented, low-scoring style similar to the Detroit Pistons of the era.
In 2014, former Bulls player Steve Kerr began using a hybrid triangle upon joining the Golden State Warriors as head coach, mixing in certain aspects of run and gun and small ball to huge success.
In 2014, Jackson joined the New York Knicks as president of basketball operations, and hired former Laker Derek Fisher as the head coach in hopes of installing the triangle offense.
It also did not help that Knicks players, especially Carmelo Anthony, were reluctant to learn the offense, and lacked the necessary discipline and patience to run the triangle.
[10] Tim Cone, the current head coach of the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, continued the movement in the triangle offense and brought it to the PBA in 1989 when he was in Alaska Milkmen, thus aiding him to win a league-record 25 championships with three different franchises.
