Doctor MJ wrote:It's understandable why people choose years like 1988 as Jordan's best given that Jordan was at his "Most Air Jordan" in that time frame. But I'm extremely impressed with the way Jordan adapted to Phil Jackson's Triangle. Had Jordan been either unable or unwilling to change to this more read & react style, it would have backfired, and Jordan would have likely been doomed to be that guy who people swore "Would have won it all if they could have given him good teammates?"...but of course, he'd have had the same teammates, he'd just not be able to make as good of a use for them as he could in a system like the Triangle.
Perhaps oddly, the fact that Jordan lacks the off-the-charts floor generalship of LeBron made something like this necessary for Jordan, but then because he embraced it, I believe it enabled Jordan's Bulls best years to blaze through with a level of consistent proficiency that I'm frankly in awe of.
If you asked me to name one team in NBA history as "Most ready for battle", I'd have to go with those Bulls coming with such an unusual level of intensity given their stature.
First of all, great post Doc.
With regards to the bolded:
I would argue that the necessity of the triangle wasn't simply due to Jordan lacking floor generalship, but also to a certain type of creation being less effective in the late 80s/early 90s than it would be in the mid-00s and beyond. If you look at LeBron(and Harden, and Luka, and others), a lot of his creation - not all, by any means, but a lot - is of a heliocentric drive-and-kick variety. Draw in the defense with your scoring gravity, kick out.
I think that this is the type of creation Jordan was attempting under Doug Collins. Just dominating the ball and passing out of doubles and triples or whatever. If we look at Jordan under Doug Collins, his assists got higher each of those three seasons, peaking with his 8apg 1988-89 campaign(and that was playoff-resilient, 7.6apg in 17 postseason games). I feel like if he'd kept playing that way, that number could've gone further up. But I don't think the team would've won.
Drive and kick has been very effective over the last 15-20 years because there have been plenty of shooters to kick out to. This wasn't the case in 1989 or 1991. The only players on the Bulls shooting any kind of volume from 3 in 1989 were Paxson and Hodges.
In 1988-89:
Pax attempted 3.8 3PA per 100 possessions in the regular season, and 3.3 per 100 possessions in the playoffs - while playing 22.3mpg and 18.9mpg respectively.
Hodges attempted 8.5 3PA per 100 possessions in the regular season, and 8.4 per 100 possessions in the playoffs - while playing 22.7mpg and 32.6mpg respectively, and starting every playoff game.
That's not a lot of attempts by today's standards, but it was a fair amount by 1989 standards.
So Doug Collins may have been trying to push some ahead-of-its-time offensive scheme with Jordan dominating the ball and those two guys taking a high-for-the-time number of threes, but it just didn't win. The 3PA for Pax and Hodges may have been a lot for the time, but it's not a lot in absolute terms, and they're still just two guys, one of whom wasn't good at a whole lot else beyond shooting. So the majority of Jordan's assists probably came from kicking inward or off to the side to a mid-range shooter(Pax, Grant) or someone in the post(Grant, Cartwright, Scottie) or hitting a slasher(Scottie). That probably made for an offense that was more predictable and bothered opposing defenses less than a modern drive-and-kick type offense would. Despite Jordan's 8apg, the Bulls only had the #12 offense in the league(of 25 teams at the time).
When the Bulls won their first title in 1990-91 under Jackson:
Pax attempted just 2.4 3PA per 100 possessions in the regular season and 1.6 per 100 possessions in the playoffs.
Hodges' 3PAs per 100 were more or less in line with his 1989 numbers, but his minutes had been drastically cut - 11.5mpg in the regular season and 12.3mpg in the playoffs.
They also had BJ Armstrong by then, who was a decent shooter, but hovered around 1 3PA per 100 possessions in both regular and post season.
So in the triangle, the heliocentricity of Jordan's game under Collins is de-emphasized, what little three point shooting there had been was de-emphasized, and instead constant ball movement is emphasized because that is what makes the offense less predicable and more difficult for opposing defenses to deal with.
I'm rambling a bit now, but my point is that I believe Jordan was capable of playing that kind of heliocentric floor general type of game, but that it just wasn't as effective - because it was too predictable and didn't stretch defenses enough - in those days without the volume of 3P shooting we've seen over the last 20 years, and that is another reason why the triangle was necessary.
Note that I am not suggesting that MJ and LeBron are equals as floor generals - I'm happy to give LeBron the edge - but rather that the gap is overstated as a result of LeBron playing what is in some ways a different game.
I realize this argument won't be compelling to most of the people here, but it's the way I see it.
