Phil Jackson’s Triangle Hubris

Seriously, how’s it goink, Phil Jackson?

For the Golden State Warriors and many of the league’s 3-point shooting teams it is going quite well. For the New York Knicks it is going very poorly. Yes, Carmelo Anthony missed most of the second half of the season but they were 10-42 when Melo checked out on Feb. 9.

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Other than trading away the headache known as J.R. Smith, there hasn’t been a lot of positives in Phil Jackson the executive’s career. For the record, the Knicks finished with a 17-65 record this season.

It would be foolish to judge Jackson only on his first season, but at the same time he’s said a few things publicly that come off as mostly meaningless cliches or sound very out of touch with what’s going on in the current NBA.

When Phil Jackson opened his mouth and spoke with the New York Times, he dug in and questioned why people didn’t vote for him as executive of the year. Before we get into Jackson’s own quotes, read this except from Jackson’s exchange with general manager Steve Mills.

"As they discussed their usual daily business — everything from the playoffs to potential prospects in the draft — Jackson kept folding a piece of paper until it formed a neat, tiny square. He finally presented it to Mills, who opened it to reveal a series of numbers, which Mills presumed were the team’s odds for landing various picks in the lottery.“But they were the wrong odds,” Mills said. “They were the odds from a different year.”The message from Jackson was essentially that the numbers did not matter, that everything that would happen at the lottery was beyond their control. The team would move forward regardless. Or at least that was what Mills thought Jackson meant."

I don’t think Jackson’s an idiot or unable to understand basic facts, but when the man is running your franchise it seem important that you know he knows the draft odds. Maybe Jackson has some insane Zen-like plan, but an exchange like that reads more like someone just not paying attention. Maybe I’m entirely wrong, and that’s fine.

But I wouldn’t feel any better if that was about any other executive in the league either. I’d wonder if they knew what they were doing. It just seems weird, even for Jackson’s peyote-infused standards.

But even if there is a lack of context or understanding, it is funny to hear the following words come out of Phil Jackson’s mouth when asked if he anticipated players being resistant to the idea of running the triangle.

"We’re trying to find players who are the best fit for us. We’re really chasing as much information as we can. We’re not interested in guys who are just interested in the money and in their branding. They have to have a little more to their life than just those selfish desires. There’s nothing wrong with chasing money, and there’s nothing wrong with making the most from your name. But that seems to be the running theme that you see a lot these days."

Excuse me, sir, but Carmelo Anthony partially moved to New York for his wife’s career as well as his own stature in the league after beginning his career in Denver. Oh yeah, Anthony played in the All-Star game in New York City a few weeks after the Knicks shut him down. I think that’s fine, but I don’t think Jackson can argue his star player is any less unselfish than anyone else.

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None of that is wrong at all, but seems very out of line with what you are talking about.

Jackson spurned the Los Angeles Lakers (his girlfriend’s team) for a $12 million a year contract with the New York Knicks. The Knicks organization isn’t exactly the paragon of virtue when it comes to unselfishness.

Sure, wanting “team-first” guys is cliche, but with Jackson and Mr. Anthony making as much as they do, it is laughable hearing Jackson talking about people chasing their selfish desires.

Jackson, and the New York Knicks with him, seem married to the idea of running the triangle to the point they won’t be drafting the best player available if he doesn’t fit their system. Normally that makes a bit of sense, but not for a team as devoid of talent as the Knicks are at the moment.

Again, nothing wrong with that at all, but there seems to be a huge gap between what Jackson says and what he does. But let’s move on to the insanity of how he views what he’s done so far. When asked if knowing what he knew now, would he have still taken the job, Jackson showed more hubris than James Dolan has in his career as a musician.

"JACKSON Without a doubt. I knew it was going to be a challenge. We just didn’t have any room to work last year. We knew that we were going to have to make big changes with the limitations that we had, being in a locked-in situation as far as the salary cap goes. That’s why when I said recently that I didn’t know why I wasn’t given some votes for executive of the year, I wasn’t kidding. I was really serious. We had a yeoman’s job of having to get rid of a lot of fat on our roster to get to where we are. I saw Mitch Kupchak got a vote, so I know some people valued what the Lakers were doing obviously."

Um … the hell you thinking, Phil? The Knicks ended up 20 games worse than they were the year before. Melo was injured, but the Knicks were 10-42 when he played his last game. The Knicks weren’t breaking even unless they somehow won 30 straight games.

I’m not blaming all of that on Jackson or his decision to hire rookie coach Derek Fisher, but Jackson can’t seriously think that can he? It isn’t like the Knicks roster had gotten that much worse talent-wise according to 538.com’s Neil Paine.

Normally I wouldn’t go after someone so much for being so confident, but do you really believe he thought “goink” was a word? When a man starts saying things like that, I have to start believing they believe in their own legend a bit too much.

Even if he’s not too confident in himself, its hard not to think he believes in the triangle system a bit to much, and not enough in the evolution of the game. Back to his quotes from the New York Times.

"Q. In the middle of the playoffs, you took to Twitter to ask N.B.A. analysts to give you “some diagnostics” on how 3-point-oriented teams were faring. It struck most as a criticism of teams like the Warriors who take a lot of 3-point shots. You asked, “How’s it goink?” What was that about?JACKSON They have all these analysts. I just wanted to see someone come back to me with statistics: Is 3-point shooting in the playoffs as consistent as it is in the regular season? Does your 3-point-shooting percentage change because you’re in the playoffs? No one figured that one out. And that’s probably me being obtuse to leave it open at the end. But “goink” is one of those New York expressions that we use, and I will tell you this: I learned something. Someone sent me the fact that if you look it up on Urban Dictionary, you’ll find out what it means in today’s society."

If he can’t admit he spelled something wrong, then how’s he going to admit maybe the triangle needs some work?

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Yes, 3-point shooting does get harder in the playoffs, but so does about everything else. It is no surprise that as teams get eliminated, the best defensive teams often rise to the top. So if you are going to say because 3-point shooting goes down in the playoffs and that means you should get away from taking those shots, then what shots are left?

Again, I’m not saying Jackson’s a fool, but certainly publicly he has no problem saying things that don’t make sense.

None of these statements are their own would be all that concerning. He’s a legend and he’s confident and there is nothing wrong with that. But he’s trying to build a team in New York with limited pieces and doesn’t seem to be embracing the fact the 3-pointer is more valuable than ever.

We saw how Stephen Curry and the Warriors could get back in a game in a moment’s notice with the 3-pointer. It’s not that they were insanely accurate; shooting was down from 39.8 percent in the regular season to 37.5 percent in the playoffs. But they were relentless shooting from beyond the arc.

There was a play at one point in the NBA finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers that the Warriors passed up a dunk for a 3-point attempt. Klay Thompson missed the first attempt, but he made his next attempt seconds later.

All four of the teams that made the conference finals this shot more than 2,000 3-pointers in the regular season and were in the top seven in attempts.The 3-pointers slowly but surely became a bigger part of the game over the past decade, so Jackson talking like it is some fancy new trend that the kids are into just makes him seem out of touch where where the NBA is going.

In the Finals we saw the 6’8″ LeBron James playing center and the Warriors often fielding a lineup with no taller than 6’8″ themselves. Oh yeah, and almost all of the players on the court were capable of launching 3-pointers.

The game is changing, but at least from what Jackson is saying publicly, I’m not so sure he is himself. This isn’t the first time he’s talked about how the 3-pointer is somehow foreign to success. He has staked his legacy on the triangle offense success and is trying to make it work in New York.

"“It was part of my thinking,” he said of — once and for all — popularizing the system he learned from its innovator, Tex Winter, when both were assistant coaches in Chicago. “There are some principles of the offense that I did feel were being overrun, or disregarded.”Way back in 1999, Bill Fitch, who was Jackson’s college coach at North Dakota, told him: “There’s not going to be any more midrange shots. It’s going to be a 3-point shot or right around the basket — that’s the way the game is evolving.”Having won six titles with the triangle in Chicago, Jackson did not want to believe that. He could not understand why teams would not emulate the Bulls after what they had done."

It seems like he’s determined to make the triangle work, no matter who he has or what is going on with the rest of the NBA. He sounds like a coach in football ignoring the evolution of the spread offense and quoting the adage, “Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.”

He sounds like the old man that hears about people taking selfies or photos of their food then posting them to Twitter and completely dismisses social media. Maybe the old man doesn’t want to acknowledge that it can be used as a powerful tool for breaking news because that would force him to admit he’s slightly behind the times and unwilling to adapt to changing times.

All of this makes me think of the movie “No Country for Old Men,” but not just because of the title.

The movie and the Cormac McCarthy novel on which it is based is really a metaphor for retirement and growing old. In the movie Tommy Lee Jones’ character is soon-to-be-retired Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is trying to track down a hitman named Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem.

Despite being one of the main characters, Bell ends up retiring without tracking down Chigurh as he feels overmatched and unable to keep up with the killer. When Bell explains this to Ellis (played by Barry Corbin), a retired deputy, the man replies with a comment about the vanity of thinking you can stop an eventuality.

“This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” Ellis says.

Jackson’s own vanity and pride in the triangle offense may be his own downfall. It not that the triangle couldn’t be adjusted to fit into the current NBA, but Jackson sounds more like a man determined to either shove a square peg into a round hole or someone who just expects it all to fall into his lap eventually.

Perhaps I’m overanalyzing a few quotes and foolishly questioning the legacy of one of the NBA’s greatest coaches. But an error we often make when looking a great figures, whether it is history or any other subject, is believing in the legends and slowly erasing all the other factors that helped get them there.

If the memes that were floating around during the Finals can be used as an example, you’d think Michael Jordan won six NBA titles in six years, had no teammates of note, maybe played 1-on-5 at times, and turned water into wine. No one wants to mention he played with Scottie Pippen or he had a great coach. They just want to believe in the legend of Jordan.

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Even Jordan seems to believe that too at age 52. Not to dismiss Jackson’s skill as a coach, but one reason the triangle worked so well, and why he won 11 titles, is he coached all-time legends like Jordan, Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal, Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant, not to mention all the other greats those men played with on those teams.

He has Carmelo Anthony now … and no one else anywhere close to being a star-quality player. The Knicks have a few talented young players sure, but no one you’d say is stepping up to be the second banana on this Knicks team any time soon.

Jackson wants to make the triangle work again in 2015 and if anyone can do it, I’ll bet on him. But if he’s trying to deny that the game has changed and that the triangle doesn’t have to evolve, then maybe he’s looked in the mirror too long and instead of seeing the wrinkles that Father Time has exposed he’s convinced himself he doesn’t look a day older than 40.

He feels his legacy and the Knicks success is tied to the triangle.

He’s an incredibly smart man and knows his basketball, but I’ll end with a quote from Thomas Sowell.

"“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”"

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