Phil Jackson on the Knicks: 'I don't care about the triangle ... Just show me what will work'

JM: There have been reports you are frustrated that (Knicks coach) Jeff Hornacek isn’t employing the triangle offense enough. Is that the case?

PJ: No. But when they run it I want them to run it the right way. If you are going to do it, use your skills and run it the right way. I’m not frustrated at all. Derrick Rose missed three weeks of training camp (because of a civil trial). It’s totally understandable where we are as a ballclub. We have guards that do a lot of stuff off the dribble. I want them to understand they can do things off the pass. It has to be a combination.

JM: Can the triangle still be effective in today’s game, which has gone the “space and pace” route?

PJ: If you want to learn the fundamentals of the game, you don’t bypass any of the basics, like how to make a post pass, how to set up a screen, what pivots you can use to escape pressure and force defenses to react. What are the passing lanes? You have to acknowledge that. You have five players on the floor. If you are going to drive you have to know where players will be on the court. If you are going to make a pass you need space between players and have a certain amount of lanes open. Appropriate space between players is 12-to-16 feet. Eighteen-to-20 feet is a little long to make an appropriate pass. We’ve extended that to create long lanes to allow players to roll to the basket and stretch the floor.

JM: So, is it safe to say the Knicks will not be a “space and pace” team any time soon?

PJ: It’s my feeling when everybody does the same damn thing it becomes, ‘Who has the best Rolls Royce? Who has the best, fastest stock car in this race we are running?’ So if you have LeBron, wow, we’re going to do the same thing even though we don’t have the Rolls Royce? You have to be unique. You have to have something no one else is doing to have genius in this game. It becomes an ownership. I don’t care about the triangle. I care about systematically playing basketball. If the spacing isn’t right, if guys are standing on top of each other, if there aren’t lanes to be provided, or rebounders available to offensively rebound the ball, or we don’t have defensive balance when a shot goes up, all of these things are fundamental basketball. I follow it. I’m not railing, ‘This is inadequate’ or ‘This isn’t right.’ Just show me what will work. Are we running around for no reason? Can we hit the first cutter? Do we have the ability to hit the second option or are we just bypassing plays so someone can hit a 3-point shot? It doesn’t make sense to me.

The triangle offense may or may not be the answer, but Jackson is fair with his evaluation. 11.1 percent of the Knicks’ possessions have ended in isolation, which is the third-highest percentage of any team in the NBA.

For perspective on Jackson’s criticism: New York is shooting 40.6 percent from the field in isolation sets, which ranks No. 19 in the NBA.

Yes: the Knicks go ISO at the third-highest rate in the NBA and convert with the 19th-best efficiency.

And then, of course, there’s the matter of determining a style of play on the court: “developing the system so that balls are moved, and passes are made, and people make cuts to create open opportunities for teammates.”

“I know you all know about the vaunted Triangle offense, and it’s been maligned in the past few years, but I believe in system basketball,” Jackson said. “Steve Mills came out of Princeton. I came out of a system that we ran here in New York in which team ball was an important aspect of playing, and we believe that’s what we want to get accomplished as we go forward from here.”

By last spring, James L. Dolan, the executive chairman of Madison Square Garden, had offered Jackson a reported $60 million over five years, autonomy in running the Knicks as team president and — for the sake of his legacy beyond wins and losses — the opportunity to plant the triangle in the heart of another premier N.B.A. market.

“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.” […]

But as to skepticism about whether he can make the triangle work in a league in which no one else plays it, Jackson said: “I’m not daunted by the number of people who have commented that this way of playing is arcane, that the game has moved on. The game has moved on.”

He also believes that the game, stylistically, moves in mysterious ways.

“I think it’s still debatable about how basketball is going to be played, what’s going to win out,” he said, leaving no doubt of his disdain for the point-guard-dominated concept of “screen-and-roll, break down, pass, and two or three players standing in spots, not participating in the offense.”