Wolves, Jefferson facing new challenge: the triangle

Timberwolves forward Kevin Love will be out for six to eight weeks, nursing and rehabbing a broken left hand that was to be surgically repaired Tuesday afternoon in New York.

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Al Jefferson, Love's Minnesota teammate, should be so lucky.

Jefferson, bothered by a sore Achilles tendon, is expected to be back much sooner than that. Which means he'll be back on the court, dealing daily with frustrations that an extended layoff would force him to shelve.

Confused? Well, so is Jefferson, whose return from surgery on the torn ACL in his right knee has entered the next level of aggravation this fall. Blame it on the triangle offense, which at the moment has a seriously Bermuda feel to it.

It was bad enough when the 6-foot-10 forward/center missed the final 32 games of last season, his impatience and bottled-up emotions getting so bad that, at one point, he smashed a flat-panel HDTV in his home while watching another dismal Wolves performance. Cleared to play again by training camp, Jefferson has swapped the distress of sitting out for the exasperation of participating yet failing.

Just returning to his prominent role within Minnesota's attack -- where his low-post moves and 20-10 reliability were missed from the moment he collapsed in a heap along the baseline in New Orleans in February -- would have been challenging. A summer spent in rehab meant a summer dedicated mostly to getting back to even, rather than enhancing, improving and upgrading his skills the way the elite players do. And Jefferson surely expects himself to rank among the league's elite.

Now, though, Jefferson is back with a new offense to learn and a new role within it to which he must adapt. Former Lakers assistant-turned-Wolves head coach Kurt Rambis has brought to Minnesota his old boss Phil Jackson's vaunted triangle offense, forcing all of his players to learn it and those few returnees on the roster to alter what had worked (admittedly with meager results) before.

"It's a change that's going to demand everybody to think the game,'' veteran forward Brian Cardinal said. "There's a huge difference in people who play the game and who think the game. It's a matter of understanding where shots are going to come from. It's easier to come down, set one screen and have somebody shoot the ball.''

For most of Jefferson's career, especially in his first two Minnesota seasons, that's how it worked: Dump the ball into Big Al and let him operate. Now Jefferson is trying to fit into the role required for big men in the triangle, which puts a premium on passing, jump shots, moving into the high post and not necessarily exploiting the low-block advantages he has honed all these years. He anticipated some of the changes -- shedding weight in the offseason, practicing his jumper -- but anticipating and applying are two different things.

Consider Jefferson's eight-minute stint across the third and fourth quarters at Chicago on Friday. It was an absolute nightmare by his standards: Empty trips downcourt. Hand repeatedly raised for the basketball, no ball delivered. Ramon Sessions dribbling right by him, Sasha Pavlovic hoisting a shot over him, new teammate import Oleksiy Pecherov jacking up threes and Jefferson never touching the ball. He fouled Brad Miller on a jump shot seemingly just to do something. Jefferson banged in a running 3-pointer from 30 feet at the third-quarter horn, and that was the sum total of his offense in the stint. When he sat down, he plopped down on the Minnesota bench and put a hand to his forehead like a migraine sufferer. Then came a thousand-yard stare.

Jefferson, to this point, is shouldering the blame.

"Tonight makes me realize why I love preseason so much,'' he said after the game. "You've got to get all those bad things out. If I've got to go through a slump, better now than later. Good thing coach let me get my minutes and get it out of me.''

Better that, after all, than for Jefferson to be a non-believer, of which there are plenty in the NBA regarding the triangle offense. The pet system of Tex Winter, Jackson's mentor and longtime assistant/consultant, has failed or at least been abandoned more often than it has worked. Jim Cleamons, a Jackson sidekick, tried unsuccessfully to install the triangle in Dallas. All-Star point guards such as Gary Payton and Jason Kidd chafed with its demands. Coaches as varied as Cotton Fitzsimmons and Tim Floyd tinkered with, then scrapped it. In Portland years ago, Jack Ramsay ran something similar but didn't like the wrinkle of "anyone'' going into the post -- not with Bill Walton as the primary option there.

Then there is the superstar factor, which Jackson's Bulls and Lakers had in ways that most mortal teams do not.

"Michael, Scottie, Kobe and Shaq,'' Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles said, when asked to explain the triangle's lack of acceptance in the NBA. In other words, not having Hall of Fame-caliber talents such as Jordan, Pippen, Bryant and O'Neal, respectively, makes the system more problematic.

"The good thing is you have a lot of ball movement and player movement in your offense. The bad thing is you have a lot of ball movement and player movement in your offense,'' the Bucks coach said. "The ball ends up in somebody's hands with five seconds left on the shot clock that you don't want to have the ball. When you have the great bailout players, they can just go manufacture shots at the end of it, it makes it all look good.''

The learning curve is allegedly steep; Steve Kerr was quoted as saying the triangle takes two years to learn fully. Meanwhile, most coaches are expected to win, well, last night, so there's one snag. Roster turnover is another, since a player might be gone just as he has his "Eureka!'' moment. Rambis at least has a four-year contract, no pressure to win soon and a new young crew to teach.

In theory, the triangle should pull away from Jefferson the multiple defenders he usually draws. Also, Rambis might be challenging his best player to extend his comfort zone, to finally force from him some of the things previous coaches have talked about.

"We know that he can be an impactful player offensively on the post,'' Rambis said in Chicago. "But we need him to stretch his game for the good of the team ... to step up his individual defense and his rebounding. He's still figuring out in this offense where he's going to get his shots from. As he learns, he'll settle down and feel more comfortable. I'm asking him to do things he's never been asked to do in his career.

"I've asked them all to be that way. It's the nature of young guys. They get anxious, they get tense, they want things to happen quickly. That's the impetuousness of youth. But that's not how they're going to grow. They just have to be patient. Accept what we're doing. Make the right plays, make the right passes, make the right cuts. And things will work out for them.''

At the moment, though, a sore Achilles tendon or even a fractured fourth metacarpal looks good by comparison to what Jefferson has been facing.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here.

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