Mark’s question were excellent and really got me thinking about that critical period in hoops history. He also posed a fascinating question about pitting the 1960 USA team against the 1992 Dream Team.

http://lakersblog.latimes.com/lakersblog/2010/08/lakers-roundtable-roland-lazenby-discusses-jerry-west-and-the-1960-us-olympic-teams-induction-to-bas.html

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, released earlier this year by ESPN Books.

The Lakers knew that last summer when they signed Artest and passed on bringing back promising young forward Trevor Ariza. Artest brings plenty of defense to help make up for his deficits on offense. But the Lakers won the league championship last year in part because they were finally able to execute the complicated offense at a high level.

This year that simply hasn’t been the case. The offense requires that players be able to make sophisticated “reads” of the action to trigger facets of the offense. Artest simply isn’t ready to make many of those reads.

Lakers Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom report that the team hasn’t been able to use the more complex levels of the offense because Artest isn’t ready to go there.

Artest’s adjustment might have gone better if backup forward Luke Walton hadn’t been troubled by back problems. Although he’s faced consistency issues over the years, Walton has always been a smart passer and a key sub who makes the offense work. Walton’s absence for much of the season has made Artest’s protracted adjustment all the more painful, although there is some hope that Walton could return to action by the playoffs in April.

Usually in March, coach Phil Jackson’s teams are starting to round into major form, but the Lakers show some uncharacteristic signs of struggle this year down the stretch. A recent three-game losing streak has Lakers fans fussing that Jackson too long clings to veterans like 36-year-old guard Derek Fisher. Jackson likes Fisher, even at an advanced age, because of his competitiveness, his ability even still to pressure the ball on defense, and most of all, his knack for getting the team into the offense and guiding its execution.

Fans who complain about a Fisher or a Walton often miss the point. Jackson’s teams are always greater than the sum of their parts. That is the main power of the offense, it’s ability to create opportunity for lesser players. Jackson’s teams have always shown an ability to bind these lesser players with stars like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Like other critics, Jordan himself once snidely derided the triangle as an “equal-opportunity offense” because it required that he share the ball with less talented teammates. But Jordan later said repeatedly that the offense gave his teams an operating format, one that allowed them to relate to each other and become champions.

The numbers back that up. In the 19 seasons that Jackson and triangle guru Tex Winter have employed the offense in the NBA, it has won 1,089 regular season games and lost just 453, an astounding winning percentage of .706.

The offense has been even more effective in the playoffs, where Jackson has used it to win 10 titles in those 19 seasons, with two more appearances in the league championship series. It has allowed Jackson to win 209 of the 300 playoff games he has coached. The Lakers recent troubles are unfortunate, because there’s more than a bit of pressure on the team this season, with Jackson’s future unclear because the team’s front office hasn’t offered him a contract.

Even if Jackson does coach the Lakers or some other team next season, it seems the remarkable run of the triangle offense is just about up, its era coming to a close. Tex Winter predicted as much a few years back.

Why? Other coaches have tried the offense in the NBA and failed famously because of the time commitment and learning curve for professional players. Only coaches with the stature of Jackson and Winter, supported by stars with the abilities of Jordan and Bryant, have made it a success. As tirelessly as he has promoted his offense over the decades, Winter himself would admit it’s an awkward fit with modern pro players.

MINDS MADE UP?

Back in 2004 when he was seething, Lakers owner Jerry Buss would have a few pops and tell anyone within earshot — even a Lakers beat reporter or two — how much he despised the triangle. Buss made it clear even to random strangers. He loved fast-break basketball ala the Lakers’ vintage Showtime teams, and he was tired of the unbalanced floor look that Jackson’s triangle teams employed.

Former Lakers VP Jerry West worked with Buss for years and knows him well. West says that when Buss makes up his mind on something, he rarely changes it.

Even though Jackson’s team had won three straight championships, 2000-2002, with the triangle, as soon as the Lakers stumbled in the 2004 championship series, the owner gave his approval for his son Jim Buss to fire Jackson as coach.

The triangle offense got a reprieve the next year when Buss abruptly rehired Jackson. Why did the Lakers owner relent and return to the triangle? 1) Because he faced a well-organized revolt by season ticket holders who demanded Jackson’s return; and 2) because Jim Buss’s hiring of Rudy Tomjanovich proved such a disaster, financially and competitively.

But six years later those basic feelings of the Lakers owner haven’t changed. Buss and his son have held off on making Jackson a contract offer for next year, and they’ve implied they want him to take a pay cut from his $12 million salary.

The circumstances mean that the 2010 playoffs are a referendum on the offense pioneered by longtime Jackson assistant Tex Winter. If Jackson somehow drives the Lakers to a repeat of their 2009 NBA championship, then the Busses may begrudgingly invite Jackson back for a shot at a three-peat.

One key inside observer says Jerry and Jim Buss are calculating that fans won’t mind if Jackson doesn’t return next year, that there won’t be a revolt by season ticket holders this time around.

It seems showtime vs. triangle are the competing visions for the team, with former Lakers greats and some factions in the front office feeding the desire of Jim and Jerry Buss to move away from the formula that has won four championships over the past decade.

At the center of the controversy is the development of young center Andrew Bynum. The Busses have great belief in his future, and they have articulated a beef that Jackson doesn’t have a reputation for developing young players.

It’s certainly true that Jackson prefers to rely on veterans to run his teams, just as it’s true that Winter himself upbraided Jackson about his handling of a young Kobe Bryant. But the Busses might be overlooking Jackson’s track record for developing players such as Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in Chicago, where Jackson guided the Bulls to six championships.

Another irony in the Buss opposition is that the triangle, or “triple-post” offense as it is also called, is great for getting the ball to post scorers, such as Shaquille O’Neal or Bynum.

Critics such as Orlando Magic assistant coach Brendan Malone, who has battled Jackson’s triangle teams many times over the years, point out that the Lakers defeated the Magic in last year’s championship because they used the screen and roll to devastating effect, rather than the triangle.

But Winter has long countered that the triangle gives teams a basic philosophy from which to operate. That means a triangle team can use its format to employ screen and roll, fast breaks, or any other number of offensive looks at any time, Winter has explained.

“The triangle is a philosophy for playing the game that allows you to just about use whatever you need in any given circumstance,” Winter once explained. The 88-year-old Winter continues to recover in Oregon from the effects of a stroke suffered last April and may soon move back to Kansas, where he enjoyed years as a highly successful college coach.

For all of Jackson’s 18 NBA coaching seasons, Winter has been a strong presence with his teams, alternately teaching and sternly correcting players who violate the principles of his offense. In all of those seasons, Winter has been an infectious promoter of the offense he developed. He has not been able to fill that role this season, leaving Jackson to press on without him.

HALL OF FAME?

Like his offense itself, Winter also faces a referendum this spring as he attempts yet again to gain election to the Basketball Hall of Fame. His name has been put into nomination many times, but he has been turned down because the bulk of his NBA experience has been as an assistant coach hired as a mentor for a younger coach, Jackson. Winter has a brilliant record as a coach for several colleges, most notably Kansas State where his teams were among the nation’s best for a number of years.

USA Basketball’s Jerry Colangelo says the Hall of Fame is trying to expand its scope to take in a rare and special genius like Winter. But this year’s field of Hall nominees is crowded with excellent players, coaches and teams and Winter once again faces uphill odds for selection. Hall of Famers Bill Walton and Magic Johnson both said Winter deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, as have many others.

Walton pointed out that generations of players have absolutely loved playing for the passionate Winter. Walton also said that of the special generation of coaches who competed against and successfully challenged John Wooden, Winter is the only major figure yet to be named to the Hall. At a time that the highly successful offense he created is being challenged, Winter is without voice to speak up for it or himself.

Jackson, though, has been diligently coaching in his absence, and although Winter’s strong presence has been missed, if the Lakers find success this post-season it could well mean yet another season for the offense.

Otherwise, this could be one of the last pro seasons for the triangle system, which is still used in pieces at some colleges, mostly by women’s teams at Tennessee and Connecticut. Winter has long predicted that his system wouldn’t be used much beyond his and Jackson’s tenure as coaches. A basketball visionary in so many ways, Winter also seems to have a clear view of the future for a system he created.

Roland Lazenby is the author of “Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon,” recently released by ESPN Books.

Those teams coached by Jackson and his longtime mentor and assistant coach, Tex Winter, also lost once in the conference finals. In the calculus of college coaching, that would mean that teams coached by Winter and Jackson made it to the “Final Four” 13 out of 18 years.

Then there are his other totals. Coming into this season, he had coached 1,476 regular-season games and won 1,041, a daunting .705 winning percentage. He’s coached another 303 playoff games and won 209 of them (just at 70 percent). His 1996 team owns the all-time high of 72 wins in a season. Not bad.

As for his role as part of coaching’s odd couple, the 88-year-old Winter has never gotten the sort of respect he’s deserved from the snobbish and persnickety Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and these days he’s in a senior facility in Oregon after suffering a stroke this past spring. But the fiery Winter took Jackson from a guy who didn’t know a basic flex offense and forged him into the superior coach who has mastered Winter’s triangle system and dominated the game.

It’s hard to believe that it was just 22 years ago that Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause insisted on hiring an assistant coach that nobody wanted and then directed Winter to teach him how to be a great one. “I wanted Tex to be the coach’s coach,” Krause explained.

In an interview with Lindy’s Sports last season before his stroke, Winter recalled that Jackson, who looked and acted nothing like an NBA coach, was soon put to work doing advance scouting for the Bulls. He returned from the road with scouting reports that were brilliant in their detail.

The quality of Jackson’s work quickly made Winter realize that what Krause was saying was true: Jackson was truly exceptional. Then, first as Winter began tutoring Jackson and later as they coached together over the ensuing seasons, Winter was nothing short of stunned by the power and scope of Jackson’s memory. He seemed to have a total recall of every game he had ever played, scouted, or coached, Winter said. That mental power, and his tremendous competitiveness, made for Jackson’s great success as a coach (that and the fact that the Chicago Bulls and Lakers rosters he coached included Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Scottie Pippen, among others), Winter said. Jackson’s memory allowed him powerful access to an array of options every time he coached a game, explained Winter, who became known as the sidekick who would fuss with and challenge Jackson during the course of many of those games.

“I don’t think there was anything that he couldn’t recall,” Winter said. “Phil remembers just about everything about every game.”

That mental power also allowed him to challenge and engage players like Jordan and Bryant on a different level. “With Phil, there are always mind games,” Jordan once marveled.

THE HARD LOOK BACK

Despite Jerry Krause’s role in advancing Jackson’s career, the two men share a bitter past. “I haven’t spoken to Phil since the last day he was with us in 1998,” recalled Krause, who was eventually let go by the Bulls and later went to work as a baseball scout. He and Jackson had engaged in a well-publicized break-up as the Bulls were winning their sixth championship that season.

Their differences are enough to make you wonder how Krause and Jackson ever came to work together, but that in itself is the bittersweet heart of this story. Krause had knocked around the games of baseball and basketball for years as a scout, taking bad flights, eating bad food, hanging out at practice, always looking for the hidden truth. Even before that, when he was a student assistant charting plays at Bradley University, Krause caught his first glimpse of Winter, then the coach of college basketball’s top-ranked team at Kansas State.

Krause was intrigued by the Winter’s unusual triangle offense and his intelligence and integrity. “I liked what Tex did. I thought, ‘Boy, if he ever got good players that offense would be something.’” Over the years, Krause kept an eye on Winter and his teams. When Winter became coach at Northwestern, “we became better friends,” Krause said.

Winter recalled that he spent a lot of time with a projector, going over film, showing Krause a lot about the triangle. “I wanted to learn about it,” Krause said. He also had hopes of becoming an NBA general manager someday and he offered promises that as soon as he did, he would hire Winter. “I want you with me,” Krause told Winter. “I want you to teach the big people and to coach the coaches.”

“I always said, ‘I’m gonna hire him as an assistant coach, and I’m not gonna worry who the head coach is going to be,” Krause recalled.

In 1985, Krause’s labor came to fruition. He was hired as GM of the Bulls as Jordan was entering his second season. Sure enough, one of the first calls he made was to Winter. First, Krause hired Stan Albeck as head coach. But Albeck didn’t want to listen to Winter and didn’t want to use the offense. Krause also wanted him to hire a goofy young assistant named Phil Jackson. Krause had discovered Jackson, a lanky big guy at the University of North Dakota, while scouting small college ball. Krause had quickly come to believe that Jackson had a bright future. But Albeck absolutely refused to hire Jackson, who was viewed as something of an oddball back in the 1980s.

Krause fired Albeck and promoted a bright young coach, Doug Collins. Krause wanted Collins to hire Jackson, but the new coach was reluctant. “I went around some things with Doug, but I finally got Phil on his staff,” Krause said.

Once there, Jackson soon began working with Winter and learning from him. But like Albeck, Collins didn’t want to listen to Winter. He even barred Winter from Bulls practices at one point. Finally, Krause grew fed up, fired Collins and hired Jackson as his head coach.

At last, Krause had the two people he had dreamed of putting in charge. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. “Phil was the first person to understand how good Tex was,” Krause said. “I give Phil a lot of credit. Phil is the best brain picker I have ever known. Phil has picked Tex’s mind for years. I’m a great brain picker myself. I’ve picked Tex’s mind for years. But Phil is by far the best I’ve ever seen because he took a genius and picked his brain. I hired Phil because he was a brilliant defensive coach. When Phil said he wanted to use Tex’s triangle, I said, ‘That’s great.’”

The two would become the core of a great coaching staff that included Johnny Bach, Jimmy Rodgers, Frank Hamblen and Jimmy Cleamons (Cleamons and Hamblen remain with Jackson today in Los Angeles). “I do believe the coaching staff we had in Chicago is the best staff in the history of the game,” Krause said. “They were a tremendous complement to Phil.”

Jackson and his staff proved the perfect match for Jordan and the assemblage of talent. However, Krause’s strong personality wore on Jackson season after season.

Winter became a moderating factor between the two. He said Jackson spent several years bending over backward to please Krause, but by late 1995, Jackson had grown weary and began to rebel. That rebellion grew into open warfare by 1996. Some accuse Jackson of using Jordan’s and Pippen’s dislike of Krause to motivate the team and drive the Bulls along a bitter road to their last three championships.

Krause soon found himself caught up in the web of Jackson’s mind games and the coach’s ability to use the media to achieve his goals. “He’s always operated that way,” Krause said of Jackson. “Believe me, he’s stirred the pot with me a number of times. That’s the way he does things. I know the act, believe me.”

Observers watched Krause’s own hubris feed into the end game when the team and coaching staff broke apart after the sixth title. Krause’s vision of Jackson and Winter had been special, then it turned into his nightmare.

Jackson “rode off into the sunset;”  that was how the media termed the parting.

In his late 60s and still living in the Chicago area, Krause offered a matter-of-fact view of his days with Jackson. “I’ve got tapes of every game that was played in that era,” he says. “I’ve never looked at ‘em.”

Jackson was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2007, which served to remind Krause of his frustration at not getting the Hall to recognize Winter as an all-time great coach. Winter is one of the game’s ultimate “geniuses,” he says. Krause himself was on the selection committee for the Hall several years ago and resigned in protest over the issue. “I did everything I could do,” Krause said, adding that the politics of selection has made Winter’s recognition an impossibility. “It ain’t gonna happen.”

He has grown to accept that reality as he has everything else that came to pass. In an interview last year, Krause said he has moved back to baseball found enjoyment there.

Just don’t expect any warm reunions of that Bulls club, one of pro basketball’s greatest , he said. “It’s past history. It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”

With the hiring of top Lakers assistant Kurt Rambis as the head coach in Minnesota, obvious questions have arisen about the future of the 64-year-old Jackson, who has had both hips replaced in recent seasons.

Jackson is fulfilling the last year of his contract (which pays him $12 million per season), but he is said to keep a heavy heart over Winter’s condition. Jackson’s intelligence has long intimidated all of those around him, players and assistant coaches alike, except for Winter, who while working as a Lakers special assistant in recent seasons could still vehemently challenge Jackson. Winter was pleased when ounger assistant Brian Shaw would show some willingness to stand up to Jackson and actually differ with him. As one inside observer of the Lakers explained, those challenges are important to Jackson, especially now that Winter is incapacitated.

“They keep him from getting bored.”

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, a biography set to be released this winter by Random House/ESPN.