Count Kenyon Martin as another former player who believes Phil Jackson’s triangle offense is antiquated and does not belong in today’s NBA.
“The triangle is not going to run in this NBA, I don’t care who you have on the floor,” Martin said on the “Two Man Weave” podcast, available on TuneIn. “This is not your Bulls, this not Kobe and Shaq’s Lakers. This is the 2017 NBA, and that style of basketball is not going to go.”
But since the inception of Jackson’s tenure as Knicks president — a miserable three-year slog with the team compiling an 80-166 record — he has attempted to force feed the triangle to a roster not compatible with the offense he ran to perfection while coaching the Bulls and Lakers. The results have gone as expected.
The Knicks have not come close to reaching the postseason, and free agents avoid a toxic situation that includes a feud between Jackson and the team’s top player, Carmelo Anthony.
The feud reached a boiling point this season with Anthony still struggling to find his way in Jackson’s offense. Martin said it should be Jackson figuring out how to best use Anthony — a 14-time All-Star — and not the other way around.
“You have to use a guy’s skill sets,” said Martin, who played 50 games for the Knicks between 2012-14 and was a teammate of Anthony’s in Denver. “I understand Melo is a ball stopper. I played with him for eight years, I understand that. But you do things to circumvent that. You get him a strong-minded point guard who he respects. … I don’t think Phil has done a good job in doing that.”
Instead, Jackson has launched a crusade versus Anthony through the media.
There have been cryptic tweets about being unable to change the spots on a leopard and public comments about Anthony being a ball-stopper who can’t play within a system. Those comments, along with Jackson’s end-of-the-season presser during which he said Anthony was better off “somewhere else,” had Jackson under fire from the NBA Players Association.
“If you have a problem or something to say to a player, or whoever it is, you go to that player and have man-to-man conversation,” Martin said. “Whatever comes out of that is where it should be.”