Pete Carril On How Will Princeton Offense Works for Lakers

I love and hope Kobe will retire a Lakers. I think Mitch has done such a wonderful job of trading for marque players that even Kobe realizes that he cannot dominate the ball as he used to. And I think he's also smart enough to know that he doesn't need to do it anymore with the weapons that he has now. D12 is the future of the Lakers, Kobe knows this, that's why he made the comment that he will hand over the keys in 2 years. But it really isn't his choice any more. The Lakers have a bright future, even after Kobe retires. Hopefully with 2 more championship rings before the send off.

Go pull up some youtube videos of the Sacramento KIngs teams of the late 90's-early 00's. They would have won at least one title if they could have got past the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. In fact, they did have the Lakers on the ropes in the 2002 WCF and only a Horry 3 in Game 4 and then a team choke job in Game 7 kept them out of the Finals. Those teams were coached by Adelman, but Carril was one of his assistants and they ran the Princeton offense with Divac and Webber playing the post positions. What I recall is that neither Divac nor Webber were 3pt shooters on any regular basis, but they were both excellent passers no matter where they were on the court and as a result, the Kings were dang hard to stop unless they were shooting themselves out of a game.

So taking a page from those Kings teams, I don't think Gasol needs to go out to the 3pt line but we should see a lot of him operating from the high post with cutters taking his passes. Also the offense does allow for pick and roll plays: the Kings used a lot of those with Bibby up high and either Webber or Divac setting picks. So we should see a lot of Nash-oriented pick and roll plays that are designed to both take advantage of Nash's p-n-r skills and also get Kobe and MWP easy shots from the weak side when the defense overplays the pick and roll.

I'm counting on Nash and Jordan overriding Brown as necessary. Kobe will have their backs.

Maybe I'm expecting more than will actually happen....but I feel like due to the amazing skills and smarts of Nash (and Kobe too) and the terrific complementary skills (& Pau's smarts) of Dwight and Gasol that we may see a constantly switching "hybrid" offense that utilizes best parts of the Princeton and the awesome P&R options. With Nash orchestrating in real time what it does according to the defenses he sees on the floor at any given time.

And it may function at a level rarely seen before due especially to Nash.

The Princeton offense fit that Sac team very well. They had big men who can pass, and Princeton offense utilizes those passing strength because they do a lot of back cuts when the ball goes into the post. It's definitely a good system that was run well by the Sac coaching staff with Carril on the bench like Tex with the Triangle.

Now if we had Adelman, and we brought in Eddie Jordan...then I would have much more confidence in running the Princeton correctly...and the players knows that the coaching staff knows what they are talking about and have the experience to tweak things to take advantage of each team's weaknesses.

This is very similar to the Timberwolves hiring Rambis to implement the triangle. It was a complete disaster because he didn't have the coaching staff to support the offense integration. You can't just have 1 guy who knows how to run it, and rest of the coaching staff trying to learn it. Except in our case, it is our head coach trying to learn the Princeton...and then trying to teach it to the players...the players are not dumb...they know that Brown doesn't know the offense...and that's when the respect and trust falls apart.

adelman used it with the kings
i think it's a formidable offense
but adelman also >>>>>> eddie jordan so there's that to consider as well.