Leaving The Triangle, Was It A Good Decision?

It was a terrible decision but at some point it had to happen and no better moment than with Nash.

YES! Now we have developed the new secret weapon. The "Mettangle". Metta = peace and love. Angle = score from all sides. Put these together and this team will happily kick your A$$. If you don't believe me .Ask the Thunder.

We're kind of running the triangle-esque. With Kobe as the post up, mixed in with pick and rolls. and Nash high pick and rolls.

They wouldn't have to keep triangle ... but the correct hire was Adelman, not Brown. Adelman already had a proven track record of knowing post offense and knowing how to use two post players together. Took a 4th quarter choke job in a 7th game that ran overtime for the Shaq-Kobe Lakers to beat the best of Adelman's teams. Heck Adelman got a seriously undersized Houston team to a 7th game against the Lakers in 2009. You may call that one smoke and mirrors or call it the Lakers playing down to the competition, but you can't deny Adelman's Rockets team came to play. The man knows how to coach and he is not afraid to tweak his system to fit the players he has available to him. Better yet, he had Kobe's respect and endorsement as the next best candidate if the FO didn't want Shaw.

Instead we've had to suffer through one of the most offense-challenged coaches ever followed by one of the more inflexible coaches out there. The Lakers won a couple because MDA gave some on entry passes and posting, among other factors...

nameant wrote:Well no it wasn't a good decision but we can't expect any coach we hire to use the triangle simply because Phil did. We probably should have went with a coach that would fit the system we've had the most success with (the triangle) but we didn't. Kobe is a far better player in the triangle than without it.

I think 5-10 years down the road when more people are comparing kobe and michael one will have to bring up the coaching changes kobe had to go through at the end of his career, no matter how many more chips he wins. If he doesn't, it's still a very important point.

Chillbongo wrote:

TIME wrote:I think I'm going to start posting this in every thread:

The problem is not the offense.

Did anyone listen to AM 710 Nightside last night? They had Jay from Compton hosting.......dude got on and basically blamed the Laker struggles on Kobe.

On Kobe.

not defense. On Kobe. I was so pissed, I called in to counter him and the phone's guy said he would put me on but disconnected me. It's like they were going for only callers who agreed with him.

I would have loved to have you on to discuss things with me! I'm sorry about that dude...not a good look.

One of the worst decision considering we still have players like Kobe, Pau and Dwight in our team.

Triangle > Showtime II basketball.

noobiew wrote:One of the worst decision considering we still have players like Kobe, Pau and Dwight in our team.

Triangle > Showtime II basketball.

as if this current team is actually playing "showtime" basketball


more like triangle >>>>>>>> inconsistent, lazy, half-assed basketball

Offense is not the issue, it's defense, it's lacking athletes to play defense. Offense can be a problem when we jack up and brick a million 3's that lead to fast breaks for the other team, or when we're sloppy and turn the ball over, but we had similar issues on defense the last season with Phil that we have now. The triangle offense didn't keep us from ever guarding the 3 point line back then, this new offense shouldn't keep us from doing it now, so again, it's not the offense, it's the defense. We also seem to regularly score over 100, so it's not like our offense is holding us back, we can put the points up pretty good most of the time. Our defense in the Mavs series, the last series under Phil, was a joke, an embarrassment, just like it can be at times now, that's what costs us games.

^
true

defense is this teams biggest issue by far. but it's not that they just flat out suck at defense. it's a result of the change that the NBA has undergone in the last 4-5 years, transitioning from a big man's game to small ball. the league is now dominated by teams with speed and the lakers are severely lacking in that department. kobe and nash are just too old and slow to defend those quick, athletic guys like westbrook, cp3, lawson, barea, etc. thats why those guys kill the lakers every time.

just look at the heat and how they play with such a small lineup and you can see how different the league is now. gone are the days of needing a big man down low to feed the ball to. the only true decent centers left are dwight, hibbert, and bynum

I disagree that you must play small to be effective. The Grizzlies are just fine and they feature to slow, big men in the middle.

The difference is, when the tempo changes, they adapt too with mobile bigs off the bench. We don't have that depth and we didn't have the health needed to counter balance that.

Our main issue is defense. We don't have the pieces to defend the perimeter effectively. The secondary issue is our effort. It's just not there at a Championship level. It never had the chance to develop there. Teams that want to compete, want that ring, need a chance to stay healthy enough to SEE where their team can be. They need a chance to see what they are and where they need to go. We didn't get that and honestly even if we did, we might not have won anything anyway.

This summer we need to fix two problems and they can probably be fixed with the same pieces: young, hungry guys that want to get after the ball. Replace some of our older guys with those types and our team suddenly will look like a juggernaut again. For instance: if we had Hill and Clark healthy all year instead of Pau, we'd have looked better. Simply because Hill is an athletic worker. Those are the types we need and we need them from our 2/3 and our 3/4 area.

jlkr wrote:They wouldn't have to keep triangle ... but the correct hire was Adelman, not Brown. Adelman already had a proven track record of knowing post offense and knowing how to use two post players together. Took a 4th quarter choke job in a 7th game that ran overtime for the Shaq-Kobe Lakers to beat the best of Adelman's teams. Heck Adelman got a seriously undersized Houston team to a 7th game against the Lakers in 2009. You may call that one smoke and mirrors or call it the Lakers playing down to the competition, but you can't deny Adelman's Rockets team came to play. The man knows how to coach and he is not afraid to tweak his system to fit the players he has available to him. Better yet, he had Kobe's respect and endorsement as the next best candidate if the FO didn't want Shaw.

^^ This all day. I am with you jlkr. To answer the question, no, it wasn't a good decision. Not in a lockout season with no time to adjust to a new system. Not with the players we had at the time - Kobe, Gasol, Bynum and Fish, i.e. no real point guard. And no, because we needed some kind of continuity to have the best chance to do well in a shortened season. The teams that did the best had no significant changes to speak of in Miami and OKC.

Adelman or Shaw would have been the best choice as many of us were arguing at the time. With Shaw you had the triangle and you had a person in charge who Kobe and the others trusted. Yes, there was a gamble in that he had never been a head coach before, but Shaw has been such a leader that Phil trusted him and groomed him and Kobe endorsed him.

I was in favor of Shaw but once Adelman's name came up and I thought further on it, Adelman became the clear favorite to me. His offense was closely related to the Triangle with possibly a little more interplay between the high post (Gasol) and Kobe with some pick and roll and cuts. Regardless, it was close enough to implement without much problem.

Personnel-wise, we still needed to upgrade at the 1. But Sessions would have been a nice fit at PG for Adelman, and he came about mid-season. Ron Artest played some of his best ball under Adelman so that was a no-brainer fit.

Well, what could have been . . . I would give a lot to have seen Pau and Dwight and Pau and Bynum play under Adelman. I think we could have seen a revitalized Gasol. This year it's a moot point because his injuries have totally undermined his play.

Jerry Buss and Mitch were both on board for Adelman. Jim hired Brown and that was truly a mistake. Next time Jim should let Mitch pick out the coach.

^ We can only hope that Jim has learned from his mistakes and will leave the basketball decisions (personnel and coaching) to the basketball people. Three bad coaching hires in a row. Will he go for a fourth or just swallow his pride and let Mitch handle things? I would have loved Adelman. Phil coming back this year would have been ok too. Not saying that either one would have taken us to the promised land but it certainly would have been better than what we've seen under Brown and D'Antoni.

dmaul wrote:^ We can only hope that Jim has learned from his mistakes and will leave the basketball decisions (personnel and coaching) to the basketball people. Three bad coaching hires in a row. Will he go for a fourth or just swallow his pride and let Mitch handle things? I would have loved Adelman. Phil coming back this year would have been ok too. Not saying that either one would have taken us to the promised land but it certainly would have been better than what we've seen under Brown and D'Antoni.

^^ Agreed 100%.