Knicks will keep trying at Jax’s beloved triangle
Life comes at you fast, especially when you’re the head coach of the New York Knicks.
In Jeff Hornacek’s case the honeymoon lasted 48 ugly minutes against the defending champs on Tuesday. In the immediate aftermath of the Knicks’ 117-88 opening night loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers the star point guard questioned an offense that has been questioned by other Knicks for three years running.
“It’s always us, right?” Carmelo Anthony said when asked why you never constantly hear about 29 other teams struggling to pick up an offensive system.
“It can get frustrating,” Anthony added. “Especially a guy like (Derrick Rose) who is used to having the ball in his hands and offenses is running through him and it’s all spaced out and pick-and-rolls and utilizing what he can do and his strengths are. Like I said for me, it was the ultimate sacrifice where I came from something totally different where you come down and you run a play and you knew it was coming to you. Here, you don’t really know when you’re going to get it and when it’s coming to you. So it’s an adjustment.”
Anthony, the longest tenured Knicks player under Phil Jackson, still hasn’t fully embraced the triangle and he apparently has A-list company in Rose, a former MVP in a non-triangle offense. Anthony once finished third in the MVP voting while also playing in a non-triangle offense. So if Rose excels in pick-and-rolls, shouldn’t the Knicks run more pick-and-rolls?
“He has a great point,” Anthony said following Thursday’s practice. “I’m pretty sure he won’t complain about it. I don’t think the comment that (he) gave was actually a complaint, it was just more him gotta get comfortable with what they want from him.
“This is totally new for him and the new guys on this team. I don’t think he was bashing the system or what we’re running. I think it’s more him personally trying to get a feel and get back out there.”
Hornacek explained that the Knicks did in fact ran pick-and-rolls and isolations early in their offense, saying “That’s all we did. And we scored 85 points.”
“I don’t think we were in our triangle aspects of it that much. A lot of times we’d get into it after we make three or four passes. We took a lot of shots where it was one or no passes. When that happens, you’re not really getting into that part of it.”
The implication is that the Knicks never gave themselves a chance to make the triangle offense work because they failed to move the ball. Even Rose agreed, noting that the Knicks finished with 18 turnovers and 17 assists.
“I think everybody knows it was terrible,” Rose said of the ball movement. “We have a lot of room, a lot of upside, to what we have on this team. Like the only way that we can play is hard, play efficient and play for each other and everything else should follow. We should do what the game tells us to do. If it tells us to shoot the ball when we’re open, shoot. Two people on you, you draw the attention for your teammates.”
Hornacek made sure to mention that Tuesday’s opponent was the battle-tested Cavs led by LeBron James and that it’s unwise to overreact either positively or negatively to one loss.
In other words, Hornacek is not scraping the offense in advance of Saturday’s home opener against Memphis. In fact, he hinted that Jackson, who attended Thursday’s practice, wants the new coach and players to exercise patience and practice the triangle.
“Well, you know Phil’s been great trying to emphasize, ‘yes you want to win games but you want to get better as the year goes on,’” Hornacek said. “So if you back out of something, just because it’s not working offensively or defensively, you can’t all of a sudden start changing things because it may not work right now. The point is to try to get better at that particular thing and that’s what we’re trying to do.”