For decorated tactician coach Tim Cone, there was some guilt on his part when he made changes to the Triangle offense.
The American mentor hasn’t been purely running the vaunted system since his first stint with Ginebra in 2016, as the game has evolved and that adjustments were necessary to keep pace.
But Cone admitted that he couldn’t help but think of the late Tex Winter, acknowledged as the innovator of the Triangle, since Winter might not have been in favor of the changes he’s applied.
“I always felt guilty whenever I try to do something new. I kinda felt guilty about it,” Cone confessed during his talk in the Hoop Coaches International Webinar hosted by the Blackwater Elite
“I gotta pull myself back and say ‘No, that’s not how Tex would do it.’ I was really a strong, incredible follower of Tex Winter. And we kept that level a lot all the way through twenty-three years.”
For 23 years, Cone ran the Triangle by its own standards, and there’s no questioning its success. After all, he won a total of 18 championships both with Alaska and Purefoods.
But now, variations have occurred in order to keep pace with today’s game. And so far, in the four years Cone has been with the crowd darlings, the results won’t make anyone feel guilty, for sure.
The Gin Kings have won four titles in that time, which raised the only two-time Grand Slam coach’s ring count to 22.
“Through the years, obviously, we have evolved the Triangle. It evolves on itself, but we still stay very, very much into the Tex Winter principles of the Triangle,” the 62-year-old mentor said.
So with that kind of success with the innovated Triangle, one can’t help but be in awe — including Ronald Lazenby.
Lazenby is an American author who has written five dozen books, including Bull Run! The Story of the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan: The Life, and Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant.
Lazenby, who recommended Cone to be part of the New York Knicks’ coaching staff in 2017, attended the webinar just to express his admiration for what Cone has done with the Triangle.
He also told Cone that Winter, who passed away in 2018, would be impressed with him.
“This is fascinating. I just wanna say Tex Winter is watching from heaven. I just wanna say he would be fascinated by your innovation and it just would be special to him.”
Cone felt extremely delighted to have heard from Lazenby. He then expressed how he has felt better with the changes he’s done with the system popularized the Chicago Bulls of the ’90s
“I felt so guilty at first moving away from the Triangle, but then after a while, thinking about him and knowing him as I did, he was such an innovator,” said Cone, who first met Winter in 1999.
“And then I started thinking, instead of feeling guilty about it, I started being proud of it because I felt Tex would like this, Tex would like that. He’s always on my mind. Really truly.”
Surely, Winter would be beaming with pride in heaven now with what his disciple has done.
