http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/sports/basketball/triangle-offense-could-limit-knicks-coaching-candidates.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Triangle Offense Could Limit Knicks’ Coaching Candidates

Steve Kerr said he uses some principles of the triangle offense with the Warriors, but he has the freedom to tailor his strategies to his players’ talents. Rob Carr/Getty Images
The happiest man in America is, or should be, Steve Kerr. How close he actually came to accepting an offer to coach the Knicks from Phil Jackson in May 2014 we don’t really know. Only that Kerr had understandable reservations about becoming the frontman — or fall guy — for the newly minted Team Triangle before an offer he couldn’t refuse from the Golden State Warriors made it a moot point.

You probably know the rest of Kerr’s fork-in-the road story that fortuitously led to an N.B.A. title.

Just recently — or exactly one week before Derek Fisher coached his final game Sunday for the Knicks — Kerr visited Madison Square Garden with his irrepressible band of Warriors. Before the game came the predictable gotcha question of why Kerr, who played for Jackson in Chicago, did not use the triangle in his first head coaching position. His eyes rolled and he said, well, the Warriors, like other teams, had incorporated some principles of the offense. Like most teams, he added, they also had a system more tailored to their talent.

And Kerr, in turn, had wisely been given the creative freedom to cultivate his own head coaching persona.

The lack of same surely contributed to the rapid downfall of Fisher, who was fired by the Knicks on Monday before he could reach the halfway point of a four-year contract, reportedly worth $20 million. By comparison, Brad Stevens was given a six-year, $22 million deal by the Boston Celtics, also last season, which averages to about $3.7 million a year.

Stevens, now regarded as one of the bright young N.B.A. minds with an overachieving Celtics team, had an estimable coaching record at Butler. Fisher’s Oklahoma City Thunder player’s uniform was still perspiration-soaked when Jackson hired and overpaid him because he had to. That’s what happens when you limit yourself to a rather short and unimpressive list of acolytes in the construction of a team that is intended — partly, at least — to enhance your own coaching legacy.

Once Kerr walked away, Jackson had scant options. But was Fisher really ready for a job so public and pressure-filled? Had he had enough time to make the emotional advancement to coaching from the role of the generic player, who more often than not gets to blame the coach for all that goes wrong? Did he fully understand the accountability that accompanies a position that is an extension of management?

That became a debatable and contentious issue when Fisher left the team during training camp to ostensibly visit his children in Los Angeles, only to wind up embroiled in the domestic affairs of Matt Barnes, a former Lakers teammate now with Memphis, and Barnes’s estranged wife.

Of the fallout, which spilled into the season with Barnes providing the oral spice, Jackson said Monday: “It was embarrassing.” He also asserted that a publicized scuffle with Barnes — for which the player was suspended for two games by the league — did not factor into Fisher’s dismissal. But who is Jackson kidding? How could it not?

For all the justifications that Fisher was a grown man and free to see whomever he liked, the episode diminished him, casting doubt on his capability of elevating himself above the players’ indulgences and conceit. Worse, he appeared to be guilty of using his own children as cover. In all likelihood, he had less credibility in his own locker room, and that is typically a kiss of death.

Few coaches are altar boys, mind you, but many will survive an embarrassing misstep or two given the forums they have, the daily opportunity to inform and entertain — if not actually befriend — reporters who cover their team. Unfortunately for Fisher, he did not, or chose not to, have that option, and Jackson is as much at fault for that as Fisher.

Upon signing on as team president in March 2014, Jackson promised a more open and cooperative organization than what preceded him. He tried to be more of a presence for a while but has retreated this season, surfacing Monday for the first time since training camp.

As for Fisher, he was routinely robotic at news conferences and unapproachable the minute they ended, always with Knicks public-relations officials leading him away. Sure, coaches should be judged by wins and losses, X’s and O’s, but public perception often contributes to the definition of acceptable performance and it is often influenced by personality. By creating the image of a self-assured man in control.

In a dreadful stretch of nine defeats in 10 games, when the Knicks’ playoff hopes slipped onto life support, Fisher seemed increasingly defensive and detached. He didn’t come to New York with that reputation. We never found out who he really is.

His record was 40-96 when Jackson replaced him, for now, with the assistant Kurt Rambis, another member of his family coaching tree. Now Jackson has another hire to make while the taint of a failed choice settles in just as the Knicks have managed in three weeks to turn a delightfully resurgent season into another dance with dysfunction.

Carmelo Anthony’s surgically repaired knee is a looming problem. The last thing Kristaps Porzingis needed was instability. Can Jackson’s No. 1 priority still be a coach who must be a triangle devotee? He said that he would prefer one but that it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker. He pretty much said the same thing before hiring Fisher.

Tom Thibodeau is available and a proven commodity, a defensive stalwart and a former Knicks assistant. But the obvious target becomes Luke Walton, who has been Kerr’s assistant at Golden State and presided over the Warriors’ astonishing start to the season while Kerr was recovering from back surgery.

With Kerr, Walton has witnessed the benefits of being a first-time coach with more clout to wield than preconditions to meet. He has also seen what happened in New York with Fisher and may wonder if Jackson has learned his lesson.

Has he? On Monday, he said that his next coach would again have to “match the style of the way we do things.”

If that’s the case, if the triangle remains his most acute angle, you could fill a telephone booth with the candidates.

I mean, I agree that Thibs will not get a real shot at coach because of the Triangle and Phil's prejudices...

it does limit us in this regard, I think.

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

Not so obvious to everyone here.

Rookie wrote:Should also limit the search to candidates that have not slept with Matt Barnes wife

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

Not so obvious to everyone here.

Who Patrick Star?

Plenty of posters here were defending this system to the bitter end. Pretty sure you knew that.

I'm defending the system. I think what we are doing out there is a good thing. Fisher was fired because of his short comings. If we continue on this path and keep improving we'll be fine. Phil has a short list of disciplines to call on. Luke Walton just is the hottest name. Kerr did fine last year. Brian Shaw is a Decent coach. Rambis isn't a slouch either. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

Not so obvious to everyone here.

Who Patrick Star?

Plenty of posters here were defending this system to the bitter end. Pretty sure you knew that.

I'm defending the system. I think what we are doing out there is a good thing. Fisher was fired because of his short comings. If we continue on this path and keep improving we'll be fine. Phil has a short list of disciplines to call on. Luke Walton just is the hottest name. Kerr did fine last year. Brian Shaw is a Decent coach. Rambis isn't a slouch either. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

Then I dont get your post because the article spoke of its limitations. Kerr didnt use it, Shaw would be a disaster (See the Walton agent thread for my reason) Ive been saying since Fisher got here that he hasnt made a case to stay beyond this season, so Im not giving Fisher a pass by any means. It also repeats what Ive been saying since day one and that is that Phil should have done more to mentor Fisher, and Phil said that to the media today and to Fisher.

I believe we should get the best coach available, the best fit regardless of whether or not its Triangle based. Give the coach the last word.

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

Not so obvious to everyone here.

Who Patrick Star?

Plenty of posters here were defending this system to the bitter end. Pretty sure you knew that.

I'm defending the system. I think what we are doing out there is a good thing. Fisher was fired because of his short comings. If we continue on this path and keep improving we'll be fine. Phil has a short list of disciplines to call on. Luke Walton just is the hottest name. Kerr did fine last year. Brian Shaw is a Decent coach. Rambis isn't a slouch either. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

Then I dont get your post because the article spoke of its limitations. Kerr didnt use it, Shaw would be a disaster (See the Walton agent thread for my reason) Ive been saying since Fisher got here that he hasnt made a case to stay beyond this season, so Im not giving Fisher a pass by any means. It also repeats what Ive been saying since day one and that is that Phil should have done more to mentor Fisher, and Phil said that to the media today and to Fisher.

I believe we should get the best coach available, the best fit regardless of whether or not its Triangle based. Give the coach the last word.

nixluva wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

EnySpree wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

yellowboy90 wrote:Araton:

Not so obvious to everyone here.

Who Patrick Star?

Plenty of posters here were defending this system to the bitter end. Pretty sure you knew that.

I'm defending the system. I think what we are doing out there is a good thing. Fisher was fired because of his short comings. If we continue on this path and keep improving we'll be fine. Phil has a short list of disciplines to call on. Luke Walton just is the hottest name. Kerr did fine last year. Brian Shaw is a Decent coach. Rambis isn't a slouch either. Nothing to worry about in my opinion.

Then I dont get your post because the article spoke of its limitations. Kerr didnt use it, Shaw would be a disaster (See the Walton agent thread for my reason) Ive been saying since Fisher got here that he hasnt made a case to stay beyond this season, so Im not giving Fisher a pass by any means. It also repeats what Ive been saying since day one and that is that Phil should have done more to mentor Fisher, and Phil said that to the media today and to Fisher.

I believe we should get the best coach available, the best fit regardless of whether or not its Triangle based. Give the coach the last word.

I don't know about giving the coach the last word unless he's won a title. WTF would any of these coaches know better than Phil in terms of how to win? Bulls had some horrid offense under Thibs but they were great defensively. I think too many people are basing their view of the Triangle only on how poorly it's looked at times with the Knicks under Fisher and with a new roster. There was a point 10 games ago where the team was 22-22 and playing well and then the injuries hit and things went off the rails. Fish couldn't get it right but that doesn't mean it's the systems fault.

No other President forces a system on a coach that no one else in the league uses, and apparently wont hire anyone who hasnt, so I dont know how the **** you are suggesting that this is a other day at the office. If Phil wants this system to work, he should have been either more hands on or he should do it himself if he wants it done right.

I like the job he did the one game fisher miss because of his love triangle..