Editing Triangle offense (section)

{{Short description|Basketball offensive strategy}}
{{refimprove|date=May 2025}}
The '''triangle offense''' is an offensive strategy used in [[basketball]]. Its basic ideas were initially established by [[Basketball Hall of Fame|Hall of Fame]] coach [[Sam Barry]] at the [[University of Southern California]].<ref>Barry, Dan (June 28, 2017) [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/sports/basketball/triangle-offense-new-york-knicks.html "The Triangle Offense, a Simple Yet Perplexing System, Dies."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201118112414/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/sports/basketball/triangle-offense-new-york-knicks.html |date=2020-11-18 }} New York Times. (Retrieved October 11, 2018.)</ref> His system was further developed by former [[Houston Rockets]] and [[Kansas State University]] basketball head coach [[Tex Winter]], who played for Barry in the late 1940s. Winter later served as an assistant coach for the [[Chicago Bulls]] in the 1980s and 1990s and for the [[Los Angeles Lakers]] in the 2000s, mostly under head coach [[Phil Jackson]].

The system's most important feature is the sideline triangle created by the [[center (basketball)|center]], who stands at the [[low post]], the [[forward (basketball)|forward]] at the wing, and the [[guard (basketball)|guard]] at the [[basketball court|corner]]. The team's other guard stands at the top of the [[key (basketball)|key]] and the weak-side forward is on the weak-side [[low post|high post]]—together forming the "two-man game". The goal of the offense is to fill those five spots, which creates good spacing between players and allows each one to pass to four teammates. Every pass and cut has a purpose and everything is dictated by the defense. 

It has been claimed that the triangle offense is the optimal way for five players to space the floor on the basketball court.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://relativitydigest.com/2016/11/12/basketball-a-game-of-geometry/|title=Basketball – A Game of Geometry|date=2016-11-12|work=Relativity Digest|access-date=2018-02-10|language=en-US|archive-date=2020-11-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201118112455/https://relativitydigest.com/2016/11/12/basketball-a-game-of-geometry/|url-status=live}}</ref>