Freshly instated New York Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek won’t mince words, or sugarcoated pleasantries, when it comes to the triangle offense.
From the New York Daily News‘ Frank Isola:
Jeff Hornacek is intent on updating Phil Jackson’s antiquated triangle offense and even admitted on Sunday what has been painfully obvious for the past two seasons.
“Guys,” Hornacek said, “don’t like to run it.”
Hornacek, per Isola, was being asked to respond to Chauncey Billups saying the Knicks run a system that no one really admires or likes anymore. New York’s head honcho then elaborated on his initial response, zeroing in on how long it takes to implement these sets during live games:
“I think that’s where most people are coming from,” Hornacek said. “If you end up being a slowdown team and never end up getting easy buckets and you’re running that half-court set all the time… guys, first of all, don’t like to run it.
“But secondly, it makes it very difficult to get easy buckets early in the offense and I think in today’s game those early buckets are nice to get. We’re not running it every time. We’re mixing it here and there. Hopefully, for us it’s a good thing we can do when we need to execute a play on a dead ball that we have something to go to.”
The Knicks have ranked no better than 24th in pace over the last three seasons, according to Basketball-Reference. Over the last two years, during which time they’ve almost exclusively adhered to the triangle, they’ve fallen inside the bottom five of possessions used per 48 minutes.
Hence why Hornacek’s decision to mix up the offense is a good one. Team president Phil Jackson will in no way allow any squad with which he’s associated to ditch the triangle entirely, but he needs to give Hornacek the leeway to install some more contemporary elements—mostly the freedom to find guys shot opportunities earlier in the shot clock, rather than going through the triangle’s nuanced motions on each and every trip down the floor.
And while this give-and-take balance sounds great, not to mention necessary, we’ll need to see the Knicks offense in regular-season form before rushing to judgement on how effective it’ll be, and what iteration of Jackson’s system they’ll actually run.
