It's the triangle offense, now available in version 3.0.
These days, Kobe Bryant offers an alley-oop Pau Gasol's way and the two can exchange roles the very next play. Luke Walton posts up, then drifts out for a three-point shot, or Lamar Odom ducks and dives his way to the rim for enough double-doubles to fill his heart's content.
The part-mystical, part head-scratching triangle offense is functioning quite smoothly with Gasol completing the Lakers' trifecta.
Possibly more so than . . . Michael Jordan's championship days under Phil Jackson?
"Since we've had Gasol, it's a very good comparison," said Tex Winter, a Lakers consultant and a pretty smart person to ask on the subject because, well, he is the offense's innovator. "It's not necessarily a guy like Kobe or Michael Jordan that oftentimes makes the difference in this. Sometimes, it is the post man or someone else."
At 86, Winter is a basketball lifer and a walking encyclopedia. He played for USC under Hall of Fame coach Sam Barry, who created the premise of the triangle offense, with Winter later smoothing its edges during his more than half a century of coaching. His coaching jobs included Marquette, Kansas State, Northwestern, Long Beach State and the NBA's San Diego Rockets. He became a Chicago Bulls assistant in 1985.
When the Bulls named Jackson their coach in 1989, he brought the triangle in to do away with too many isolation plays for Jordan. The Bulls ran it to six championships. After Jackson and Winter moved to the Lakers, the Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant teams won three titles, and the Bryant-Gasol squad is hoping to get another ring.
The triangle offense revolves around reads and reaction, rhythm and rotations. Its basic principles include penetration through ball entry at the high post, with spacing and cuts predicated off the pass.
One key component is that players are interchangeable and should be able to play any position. If worked to precision, Winter says, a player should always be open.
And every good scheme contains a bailout plan.
The final option of the offense is having a Jordan or Bryant available to go one-on-one should all else fail.
The triangle is created by the center in the post, a forward at the wing and a guard in the corner. The weak side features a guard at the top of the key and a forward who are free to play a two-man game should the ball rotate there.
