Phil Jackson's legacy on the basketball court is wrapped in the triangle offence, which saw him win 11 rings between his time with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.
When Jackson was first appointed as Bulls head coach in 1989, alongside assistant Tex Winter, the architect of the triangle, their goal to implement the philosophy was to diversify the Bulls' offence, rather than have the ball in Michael Jordan's hands all the time.
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While previous coach Doug Collins had let Jordan run the offence, it didn't result in the playoff success they were chasing after falling to the 'Bad Boy' Detroit Pistons the two previous post-seasons - however, initially, Jordan wasn't a fan of the new system.
As Jordan explains in The Last Dance, his reluctance towards the triangle wasn't so much about him not having the ball, rather the ball ending up in the wrong person's hands towards the end of the shot clock.
“I wasn’t a Phil Jackson fan when he first came in, because he was coming in to take the ball out of my hands. Doug put the ball in my hands,” Jordan said.
“Everybody has the opportunity to touch the ball, but I didn’t want Bill Cartwright to have the ball with five seconds left. That’s not an equal opportunity offence, that’s [expletive]."
"So many times Tex would yell at me, ‘Move the ball, move the ball, there’s no I in team.’ Well there’s an ‘I’ in ‘win’” he explained.
As Jackson described it in the documentary, “'The ‘Triangle’ offence is set so there’s a key pass that creates motion, and then there’s 33 different types of options that come out of that single pass.”
Utilising the versatile skillset of Scottie Pippen as he developed into Jordan's sidekick and entrusting others to make plays was the key to the success of the triangle, which eventually yielded six titles in Chicago.
The Bulls would fall short in 1990, losing to the Pistons again, but it didn't take long for the triangle to bear fruit as the Bulls rolled to the 1991 NBA championship, beating the Los Angeles Lakers 4-1.
The Last Dance 10-part documentary continues with episodes 3 & 4 on Sunday, April 26 on ESPN, with two episodes to air every week following.
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