FWIW, our offense was the Triangle, and our defense a lot like Thibs'. Our drills on defense were to yell "pressure!", "deny!", or "sag!" Pressure your man if he has the ball. Deny the pass to your man when he's close enough to receive a pass. Sag toward the middle if your man is on the opposite side of the court. It is man to man defense that effectively becomes a zone - like Thibs' defense. When I see Kirk completely unguarded, his man is not sagging, but shadowing a DRose or Jimmy, or playing free safety, or double teaming. When I say it's 4 on 5 with him out there, it's truly our other 4 guarded by their 5. They don't pressure Noah much. He's often wide open for 15-20 ft shots and they let him take his time and shoot. That's effectively 3 on 5. I recognize Thibs' offensive plays, and I think they're very good. I do think they're not designed for the players in general, and that the GM has to find suitable skill sets to fill the roles in the offense. PJax fit the players into the triangle, which is the opposite. The only thing I find questionable about the schemes is he has both Noah and Gasol (and Boozer before that) setting picks above the FT line, even near half court. On one hand, it gets you picks to free up the PG (except Kirk is useless). On the other, it gets your bigs out in a position that is not where they like to score from. Boozer in Utah set picks near the lane and below the FT line in Utah and was a beast. Thibs never used him like that and he ended up turning into an outside shooting PF. Gasol has a decent outside shot, but he's shooting far more outside than he has throughout his career. His FG% is lower than his career pct for that reason.
I've noticed Gasol doesn't back up his man on the block anymore and score from the post. It's usually either he'll catch the ball, face up, mid=range, or he will catch the ball with a little bit of separation and opt for the mid ranger jumper. It's interesting how judging by your post, Gasol is playing his game within the offense and not as himself, a post up big. Sure he still operates from the post a lot but he often shoots the ball. I saw what Phil did in L.A, with a big to clog the lane and a motion offense, patience with the ball, etc. Not sure about his Chicago days, I've seen plenty of Jordan's best games but it's hard to tell what his offensive scheme is when Jordan is going off.
The triangle requires a quality post player and two wings to form a triangle on one side of the court. In LA, Gasol and Shaquille were the post guys. In Chicago, it was Jordan. He played in the post like a power forward and was a deadly scorer. He was too much for a SG or even SF to handle in the post, and if you tried a PF on him, he'd move out from the basket to drive for a dunk or shoot over the slower bigger guy. The post player must be a great passer for the scheme to really click.
Shaq flashed his passing ability even in Orlando. I think he was a good passing big by default, without Phil. Phil just utilized it the best way possible.
