TripleThreat wrote:mreinman wrote:In disclaiming the quick fix, Jackson said that it would take that long to render judgment on his methods and that Dolan had asked him to "set up something that would be long-lasting, that may go beyond my being here." He continued, "That was exactly what I'd been thinking of, building a foundation, a way of playing basketball, getting a bunch of guys that can do it. If I'm not here four or five years down the road, then I have a young coach I believe in who will complete it."
I'll say what I've always said about Phil Jackson, because I think the complication of his position with the Knicks doesn't really change
1) If you run an offensive system that NO ONE ELSE IS RUNNING, then there are no alternative sources to enrich your talent pool aside from direct and from the ground up player development. Andy Reid got massive success from Terrell Owens in a trade from SF, but SF was the bedrock of the NFL West Coast Offense. Andy Reid, a far off descendent from the Bill Walsh/Mike Holmgren coaching tree, was a WCO disciple. While many WR's failed under Reid, in likelihood the offensive system that was complex for WRs was too much for too many players, Owens thrived. If the WCO failed in every stop but SF and SF was the only team running it, then all of SF players got old and left the league, and SF stopped using it, and the college ranks wasn't using it, then Philly tried to run it alone in the NFL, where is the talent pipeline aside from internal development?
All of Jackson's previous Laker and Bulls players are pretty much out of the league at this point.
Most modern NFL offense use a Base 11 or Base 12 as their primary offense. Which is a three WR set or a 2 TE set. Defenses have no choice but to turn what was formerly a nickel cornerback into essentially a full time defensive position. Many teams defend using a base nickel defense. Lots of teams like Seattle, use a hard Cover 3 zone, where cornerback/safety type hybrids help to cover the jumbo "move tight end" phenomenon. I'm sure there is some defensive coordinator who wants to try some exotic defense that no one else uses that requires specific, hard to find personnel, but the narrative is simple. Adapt or Die. You might be a core 3-4 defensive coordinator or a staunch 4-3 guy, but the reality of the modern game is you are going to have to give different looks to stop the modern NFL offense. The successful coordinators and teams are ones that adapt to the times, face the reality of their feeder ranks of talent, and play to the strengths of their current personnel, even if it isn't ideal to them in principle. Jackson's dogmatic approach to the Triangle buckles almost all basic convention of what tends to work in modern sports.
2) In Jackson's prime, with the Bulls, the trend was still four years in college or several years in college. While Kobe Bryant was a RARE exception, the era of the One And Done means younger and less polished incoming players. The big basketball factories in college are not running the Triangle Offense. The existing "feeder system" does not truly support the Triangle Offense.
I am sure there was at least one jack off out there who was watching First Blood on Beta over and over again, while the industry had moved on and declared VHS the winner. Waiting for the "comeback", watching Stallone eat up National Guardsmen, over and over. If Phil Jackson wants to pull a Henry David Thoreau and live in a cabin and shun the rest of convention while spouting fortune cookie quotes, then have at it, it just won't likely make the Knicks a contender.
3) You can be the "better choice" than what existed previously but still not be the "right choice" This is an issue with regards to professional sports across the boards in terms of front office management. The Jets could pick any coach to be better than Rich Kotite but it doesn't mean that coach is going to be the right fit and right guy at the right place and right time for the franchise to lead them to a Super Bowl.
4) Phil Jackson is 70 years old. All this talk of the "future" of what he's going to do or moves he's gonna make, well how much time does he really have? Is a 70 year old built for this kind of grind? And if some 45 year old young hot shot GM out there is burning 18 hours a day at the job, can a 70 year old FIRST TIME GM in Jackson compete with that? There is no clearly established line of front office succession, esp for the Triangle, in place.
5) Phil Jackson has no background in scouting and/or analytics. He has no previous background negotiating with player agents. He had no function on the business side of the Bulls and/or Lakers. He wasn't in hand with the marketing, the managing of the salary cap, hammering out the legality of NBA contracts. His contemporaries, though, many of them far far younger, have far more in the trenches experience as such. And as a bonus for them, they have a built in rapport with other young hotshot GMs around the league, as they all made their bones/paid their dues around the same time.
6) Jackson is on a Five Year Deal, where the draft is going to be his primary feeder point of developing Triangle talent. In Year One, he had no picks, then getting two 2nd rounders. In Year Three, he will have ZERO PICKS. He's also given up some future 2nds. He has IMHO the least talented 15 man roster in the entire league. Given his age and time table, and asset base, how likely is he going to "build" this mythical Triangle team with 40 percent of his likely tenure, that he has zero draft ammo.
The one thing that Jackson excels at is manipulating and screwing with the sports media establishment. That's his one trump card but IMHO doesn't help the Knicks become a contender. It just means he has lots of QUOTES for nixluva to copy and paste and try to lawyer up and throw at folks as a blind defense as to why the Tao Of Phil is essential.
As I said before, Dolan could have spent 59 million less and gotten a hell of a lot more IMHO that would actually help the Knicks towards the "right" choice, not just a "better" choice than Zeke and the idiot SureShot himself. People point to all the players the Knicks missed out on and gave up on too soon or overlooked. What about all the front office talent over the last five years that other teams have now, that the Knicks could have had, if they just have given those guys a chance. Think of all that front office firepower that are current stockpiling their teams with assets that could be doing it for the Knicks right now but simply didn't offer the PR splash of Phil and his quotations book.
I like Phil Jackson the former coach. I don't like the 70 year first time GM, running his version of Beta while the rest of the world is rocking VHS, who is in over his head.
I'm not sure if colleges ever ran the triangle, which would make your concerns about a "pipeline of talent for the triangle" moot. The only prerequisite to be effective in it is to be a cerebral player/high IQ player. Enough of those still exist to allow me to believe that we can build a capable team that is also triangle competent. Whether they will be contenders remains to be seen but the reality is that Phil won a title just 5 years ago using the system. And while a great many things have changed since then (such as the droopiness of my scrotum, sadly), I don't think that the talent pool is anything remarkably different.
That being said, I am supremely skeptical of Phil Jackson's abilities as a Team President. He's too old to put in the kind of legwork we need to turn things around and too inexperienced to out wit his peers. That much was demonstrated this offseason where a phletora of assets were dumped for cents on the dollar, which we did not take advantage of (e.g. the Aaron Afflalo trade, the Pau Gasol sign and trade, Jarrett Jack with Zeller and a pick, Jeremy Lin with a pick, Jared Dudley with a pick, etc). In fact, we got owned by trading one of the best centers in the league for one of the worst value contracts in the league and little else. Time will tell how things shape up with Phil....but I'm not exactly optimistic considering the trajectory we are on.
