New York Knicks Finding a Use for the Triangle After All

NEW YORK — The triangle lives. Well, sort of.

You're no doubt familiar with New York Knicks team president Phil Jackson's beloved offense and all of the drama that comes along with it. Jackson adores his triangle. The players, not so much.

Head coach Jeff Hornacek, the middleman in all this, has pledged public fealty to the preferred scheme of his boss, but his designs seem to say otherwise. 

These days, the Knicks—winners of four in a row and owners of a respectable 12-9 record—are rarely running the triangle. As Hornacek and many Jackson acolytes are quick to point out, there are triangle aspects (a favorite phrase around Madison Square Garden), such as spacing and off-ball cuts. (Those are present in every offense.)

But, according to opposing scouts, the triangle, in its traditional form, only shows up in five, maybe 10, Knicks possessions every game. A dead ball here, an out-of-bounds set there. Nothing more.

"I think they've done a good job blending," Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Tom Thibodeau said of the Knicks offense before his team's 118-114 Friday night loss to New York. Later he added: "I think they've incorporated more pick-and-rolls, which makes sense, it fits their personnel."

But Hornacek has shown a fondness in recent weeks for dusting off the triangle whenever his team needs a bucket with the game on the line.

"Yeah, [Hornacek] said that we had to be more organized at the end of games, and I guess the triangle organizes us," Derrick Rose told Bleacher Report last week. "My job is just to go out there and do whatever coach wants us to do, and he said we're going to get more organized."

Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

Hornacek, according to Rose, wants to force opponents at the end of games to guard one of the Knicks' three primary scorers (him, Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis) in space and one-on-one. He added that getting the ball to Anthony in the pinch post, the foul-line-extended area on the weak side of the defense that the triangle likes to utilize, has become one of Hornacek's preferred late-game play calls.

The Knicks are scoring 103 points per 100 possessions during the final five minutes of games within five points. That ranks in the NBA's middle of the pack, but it's also right in line with the 105 they're putting up overall—meaning they're figuring out how to maintain their general level of efficiency even when opposing defenses tighten up.

As Rose told Bleacher Report following Tuesday's 114-103 victory over the Heat in Miami, "It's just figuring things out, improving along the way and learning how to play with one another."

Even more interestingly, the normally uptempo Knicks are taking the air out of the ball at the end of games and turning in one playbook for an entirely different one. No team is playing slower in crunch time or has a bigger drop-off between its usual pace and the speed with which it plays in these situations. 

This, again, is by design.

"During the regular part of the game, I think all those outside shots by stretch 4s are great," Hornacek told reporters recently while answering a question about the role big men hold in today's pace-and-space NBA. "But if you can put them in the post late in the games and get nice 15-footers when the game's on the line—those are, I think, overall percentages, if you don't need three points, you can go to that kind of stuff."

So far, the decision to employ the triangle in crunch time has paid off. The Knicks are 7-5 in games that are within five points with less than five minutes remaining, but an even more impressive 6-2 over their current red-hot 12-game stretch.

"We're building," Anthony told Bleacher Report. "We're doing the right things. We're trying to play the right way. We're winning basketball games."

Hornacek concurs: "I think our guys in the beginning were trying to feel each other out, 'Can we win? Are we going to be a good team or not?' When you start winning a couple games, then you start to get that confidence. You start feeling that you can win games. You don't get panicked when you get down; you just keep playing, and that's where I think we've grown so far."

An improving defense has helped, but it's mostly been the result of a more potent crunch-time attack. They Knicks have been patient and methodical. They're making sure the right players (Rose, Anthony, Porzingis) end up with the ball. There have been a number of last-second game-winning shots, including this jumper from Anthony against the Hornets from the triangle's pinch post. 

Still, it's fair to wonder whether the Knicks can continue to win close games playing this style. At its pinnacle, the triangle promotes ball and player movement. But it takes years for a group to reach that level. Running it sporadically, like the Knicks are, leads to stagnant sets. It's no coincidence that the team's assist rate plummets in close games.

But for now, Hornacek has discovered a winning late-game formula that works: ride the individual talents of his three dynamic scorers.

Maybe the triangle can be part of the equation after all. 

Knicks Insider Notebook

Road Woes

The Knicks host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night before heading out to Sacramento on Friday for the first game of what will be a five-game, nine-day West Coast swing. They face the Kings on Friday, the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday, the Golden State Warriors next Thursday and the Denver Nuggets the following Saturday before returning home.

It's a brutal stretch, the type that could derail a season, especially for a team which has dropped six of its nine away games so far this year.

So what do those on the roster believe to be the reason for those road pitfalls?

"I think it's just our mistakes are magnified on the road," Knicks forward Lance Thomas told Bleacher Report. "We make certain mistakes, turning the ball over giving the other teams points, which makes the other arenas go crazy."

Thomas was then asked if that opposing crowd noise truly makes a difference.

Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

"I think it does," he said. "It energizes the home team, then it makes you a little bit more tight, I don't think we play tight at home, we just have to play a little less tighter on the road."

So that's Thomas' theory. But here's another one: tired legs. 

The Knicks are surrendering 16.7 fast-break points per game on the road compared to just 9.2 at home. Thomas said that could be the result of some poor offensive execution turning into misfired jumpers but admitted he wasn't sure. Weariness, though, could explain it. Three of the Knicks' road losses have been on the back ends of back-to-backs. Going on the road is tough in itself; doing so the day after a game makes life on the court even more so. 

"That's one of the biggest challenges, dealing with a back-to-back," Andrew Barr, the Knicks' former director of performance and conditioning, told Bleacher Report. "It's not just about that game, it's about how much they've done the day before too."

But even the simple act of flying can sap an athlete's strength.

"Going on a plane affects energy, hormones and causes dehydration," Barr added. "It makes it much more difficult to perform." 

The good news: The Knicks don't have any two-games-in-two-nights stretches on this coming road trip. Let's see if a lack of back-to-back cures their road woes, or if the struggles go deeper than that. 

Mr. Jennings' Book Club

Marshall Plumlee wasn't sure where the book came from. He noticed it as he entered the Knicks' Madison Square Garden locker room last Monday for a team shootaround. There, standing on a shelf in his locker, was what looked like a red marble notebook with black letters scribbled on the cover.

It was Lil Wayne's new book, Gone 'Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island, a memoir of the rapper's eight-month stint in jail in 2010 that was published in October.

The book, it turns out, was a gift from point guard Brandon Jennings. He put one in the locker of every Knicks player before their game Monday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

"I really enjoyed it and figured it was something they'd be interested in," Jennings told Bleacher Report. "It gave me an appreciation of what [Lil Wayne] went through."

"You know, Brandon is the one on the team that's friends with every rapper or entertainer in the business," Rose added to Bleacher Report. "He's in that entertainment world."

Jennings said this was the first book he shared with his teammates, but that he'd be open to doing so more often. 

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats from NBA.com and accurate as of December 6. Special thanks to Miami Heat Lead Writer Zach Buckley for contributing to this report.

Yaron Weitzman covers the Knicks, and other things, for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman and listen to his Knicks-themed podcast here.