LA Lakers legend explains why modern NBA players can’t do what Kobe Bryant did under Phil Jackson

Modern NBA stars couldn’t play under Phil Jackson’s triangle offense

Former LA Lakers star Brian Shaw was a guest on Byron Scott’s podcast. When they reminisced about playing under Phil Jackson, Shaw made some interesting comments.

He admitted that the triangle offense that Phil Jackson ran was incredibly complex, and a player as smart as Kobe Bryant was the perfect player to run it. But the modern NBA stars aren’t as smart to play in that system.

“When you’re running the triangle or you’re running what we call the Princeton offense back in the day, if you’ve got players who have a high basketball IQ, like you said, you ain’t got to call s—.

“Because the defense dictates what you’re going to run. And so if you got players who are smart, they figure that s— out in a heartbeat.

“And again, like you said, if you’re going to pressure us, we would just go farther back out. Now we’re going to open up the court that much more. So now you’ve got set up back door cuts and everything else.

“So it made it so much more difficult for teams to guard you because, like you said, you can call one action.

“It’s reads, all it is reads. And I think one of the reasons they say it won’t work today, players aren’t smart enough.”

Kobe Bryant’s greatness shouldn’t take away from modern NBA stars

While Shaw is well within his rights to praise Kobe Bryant for his smarts and intellect on the court, to do so at the expense of modern stars is quite unfair.

Kobe Bryant was a hard man to impress, but there are several stars from the modern generation who earned his respect with their play.

To suggest that some of the brightest stars from the generations that followed Bryant’s, such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant, couldn’t thrive in Jackson’s system is absurd.

This is a larger problem in the NBA today, where players from the past often try to elevate themselves and their peers, but do so primarily by trying to put down the stars that came after them.