The Last Dance: Things we learned from episodes 3 & 4

1. The evolution of the triangle offense

Michael Jordan was none too happy to see his favorite head coach Doug Collins stripped of his leadership duties following the 1988-89 campaign. The two had developed the ultimate bosom-buddy player-coach relationship during Collins’ short-lived tenure at the helm of the organization during the latter part of the decade, and Jordan himself admitted that he was practically in love with Collins’ coaching style and competitiveness.

Jordan even bestowed an affectionate kiss on Collins’ cheek during a national television segment as a symbol of their loving attitude towards one another.

There was a natural gravitational pull between the pair – they were practically twin flames, but much of Jordan’s biased favor towards his former sideline instructor was heavily predicated on Collins’ desire to allow Jordan full control of the team’s offense, which of course meant more often than not, the ball was primarily in Jordan’s hands.

Collins’ comments following the heralded “Shot” vs. Cleveland in his team’s postgame presser epitomized his coaching ideologies during his tenure as headman: “give Michael the ball and get the f*** out of the way.”

And the final season of the Collins-Jordan partnership, 1988, produced a single-year resumé for Jordan that is virtually unheard of: a scoring title, league MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Slam Dunk title, and All-Star game MVP award.

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One would think a laundry-list of awards like that would be enough to keep Collins in town for the long haul.

But Jerry Krause had other plans for his team, and after failing to get over the playoff hump (that hump being the Detroit Pistons) one too many times, he decided it was time to give Collins the boot in lieu of an alternate young coach’s philosophy: Phil Jackson. And looking back, it’s hard to disagree with Krause’ move.

He had a deep appreciation for Jackson’s studious nature and knowledge of the game and was thoroughly impressed by his work while playing the role of protegé under legendary basketball mind Tex Winter.

Jackson made quick waves within his newly appointed role, not only instituting several of his previously mentioned unorthodox spiritual practices but the offensive system that Winter had so famously popularized in prior decades: the Triangle.

The system would effectively take away Jordan’s role as primary ball-handler, but opened up a drive and cut system that allowed for the free flow of offense, ensuring that a player would always be in motion without the ball, as opposed to teammates standing around and watching Jordan engage in one-on-one isolation possessions.

It proved to be exactly what they needed to get over that elusive obstacle that was the Pistons. The offense was responsible for the evolution of Scottie Pippen into an All-Star caliber player, effectively transforming his skillset to allow him to smoothly fuse into the ball-dominant point-forward’s role we see so many players of his body-build employ today – and become the perfect complement to Jordan’s scoring adeptness.

There would be no championship rings in Chicago without each critical vertex of the three-pronged machine in full vitalization within the offense, and the scheme’s implementation by Jackson actually resulted in a doubling of the triangular number for the 90’s squads when it came to winning: not only subsequent titles in ’91, ’92 and ’93, but hypotenuse reflections in ’96, ’97 and ’98.