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Phil Jackson has won nine NBA championships with the triangle offense. As Lakers fans know, Tex Winter, Jackson’s mentor and assistant coach, has developed what he calls the “sideline triangle” over six decades in coaching.

Winter has put together an immaculate system, complete with philosophy and principles, and an impressive set of skills and drills to develop players to compete with it.

Winter has often said that his offense would never have been successful on the pro level without Jackson’s special coaching gift, an ability that sold players on using the seemingly complex system, learning it to the point that they begin to feel comfortable in it and then empowered by it.

So there’s more than a bit of irony in the fact that Jackson’s deep belief in the system may have cost him Game 4 of the NBA Finals Thursday night and with it a chance for Jackson to win his tenth championship.       

The option, of course, would have been to go to the open-court look that had worked to free up Kobe Bryant for the Lakers during the series. The Celtics coaching staff had done a great job scouting the triangle and with the Lakers in the basic format, Boston was able to send three or even four defenders at Bryant in the half court.

“We finally went to the open court at the end, which allowed Kobe to operate,” Winter said.

But it was too late. The Lakers had let their 24-point lead slip away to a deficit.

Why did Jackson stay so long with the basic format of the offense? Why didn’t he go to an open-court look sooner?

“Phil doesn’t like to do it,” Winter replied. “He likes to rely on the offense.”

Relying on the offense, of course, has worked well for Jackson. He’s made himself a Hall of Fame coach with it. But the league championship series is always quite a chess match. Jackson is used to keeping the opposing team in check.

This time the board got turned against him a bit. Asked Friday if he felt any responsibility for the loss, Jackson didn’t answer directly. He pointed out that everyone associated with the team, including longtime equipment manager Rudy Garciduenas, was looking at what role each of them had contributed to the greatest single-game collapse in NBA Finals history.

He also admitted to losing some sleep after the game. You think?

There, of course, would seem to be another huge irony in the cirumstances. At age 86, Winter remains a tireless promoter of the triangle. And the circumstances seem to place him in the position of saying his offense failed. Yet Winter feels people misunderstand him often on the point. He sees the triangle as a system of basketball, an operating format. As such, the triangle provides a basis for going to all sorts of other strategies, from screen and roll action to fast breaks to spreading the floor, Winter has often said.

He employed all sorts of looks out of the triangle format during his many years as a major college head coach.

“In college, I ran the open court a lot,” Winter said.

It’s more important to Winter that the sound principles of basketball be maintained than it is to stay strictly with the offense.

Jackson has certainly taken up Winter’s cause. For many years, Jackson was Winter’s steady student. But these days Jackson knows the offense extremely well and has played a huge role in shaping and applying the system. He has used it to add championships to the resume of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, as well as Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.

To Jackson’s credit, he has loosened his approach this season, allowing his players more freedom within the system while pushing them toward a faster tempo.

An additional irony is that Vlade Radmanovic has been reviled for his obvious struggles defensively in the series, yet his presence could have been a key element in the Lakers spreading the floor and keeping control as the game came down the stretch. Yes, he has been exposed as a substantial liability defensively, but Radmanovic has to be guarded, which allows Bryant more room to operate.

I recently asked New Jersey’s Rod Thorn about the profound changes the NBA is undergoing, and he said there’s no doubt that the move to smaller, more athletic players in a spread floor format is dramatically changing the way the NBA is being scouted and coached. It’s starting to have an impact on how teams draft players.

The great success of New Orleans point guard Chris Paul is hastening this change, Thorn said. There’s no question those changes are having an impact on the NBA Finals itself. First, the Lakers were able to break the grip of Boston’s defense in Game 2 with a smaller lineup. Celtic guard Ray Allen conceded after the Lakers won Game 3 that the Lakers’ smaller, open-court lineup prevents the Celtics from sitting back and packing the lane to defend against Bryant.

Thursday in Game 4, Boston coach Doc Rivers and his staff were able to use a similar process to strike back at the Lakers. When big man Kendrick Perkins got injured in the second half, Rivers turned to the versatile James Posey and to quick, hot-shooting point guard Eddie House. Suddenly, no longer could Bryant hang back in the Laker defense to help double-team Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. The Lakers were forced to guard every player on the floor. That opened things up for the attack, and the Lakers could not stop them.

Does that mean the new twist in the chess match is going to be which team uses the open court first and to the best advantage? Does that mean in the new NBA, if you hesitate, you lose? Those are interesting questions for Game 5 Sunday and beyond.

Roland Lazenby is the author of “The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers, Told In the Words Of Those Who Lived It.”

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