This Version of Triangle Isn’t Right

The triangle offense, a cornerstone of three Laker championships, has become an unwieldy problem symptomatic of the Lakers’ woes.

The Lakers have tried to introduce more triangle sets as they move away from former coach Rudy Tomjanovich’s penetrate-and-pitch scheme, but it has been difficult to pick up a condensed, simpler version of an offense that usually needs to be mastered over a time period measured in seasons, not weeks.

The scheme that Tex Winter once needed 228 pages to detail in a book has looked dull without Kobe Bryant. Or, as Coach Frank Hamblen said of it after the Lakers’ 103-81 thumping Thursday in Detroit: “It was a disaster.”

The Lakers are running a simple form of the triangle, an offense they call “the overload.” They first ran it early last month after Bryant and Tomjanovich talked about introducing other options on offense.

Simplified or not, it had its moments with Bryant, who thought the offense would help offset the numerous double-teams he had been facing.

But Bryant has been out since Jan. 13, leaving Luke Walton and Brian Cook as the only players with significant playing time who understood the concept.

“I don’t think we know it enough,” point guard Chucky Atkins said. “Teams know we’re going to run it, and they take things away from us.”

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Cleveland guard Ira Newble will be playing Sunday afternoon. Bryant won’t be.

Bryant, sidelined since landing on Newble’s foot, will run through drills in an abbreviated type of individual practice, but all signs point to him not playing in Sunday’s game against the Cavaliers, the 15th consecutive game he has sat out because of a severely sprained right ankle.

The Lakers are 6-8 in his absence, 1-3 on their current trip, and barely fending off Minnesota for eighth in the Western Conference.