Basketball is a Complex Dance?

If you are a student of the game like I am, then you're going to love pondering some of the thoughts that Phil Jackson shares with us in my last post. I think that Phil Jackson is a brilliant coach. I use the word brilliant in the sense that he truly thinks outside the box. His "Zen Master" style of working with players and the incorporation of the complex "Triangle Offense" at a time when everyone else seemed to running free lance isolation and a seemingly endless array of set plays is completely out of the norm. And it's proven to be successful. Yes, he's had All-Star talent, but there's a long list of guys who couldn't win with talent or handle the prima donna-like personalities as well as Phil Jackson has shown the ability to do.

I love the manner in which Coach Jackson describes the process of playing winning basketball. I think that, in the quote below, he's primarily describing offense. The timing, the spacing, the speed of the cutting action, setting up screens, moving the ball, passing it to the right place at the right time. He speaks of trust. How many times have we seen players who are hesitant to pass a certain teammate the ball? Haven't we all had a player who was unable to make a pass against pressure or even a basic post feed? There's got to be cohesion and a sense of balance in every aspect of the game and Jackson captures it well with those comments.