Reporter's 10,000-word obsession: Phil Jackson's triangle offense

New York Times

A New York Times editor explains how it came to be that writer Nicholas Dawidoff went 10,000 words deep on the offense that college basketball coach Tex Winters devised and Phil Jackson perfected for the Bulls and Lakers. The quest began with Jackson trying to introduce the offense to this season's New York Knicks, and a 1962 book by Winters. The story is in this Sunday's NYT.

How it came together, as told by Jason Stallman:

I wrote to Nicky Dawidoff on Nov. 19 and invited him to find the book online — no easy feat — and write what I was sure would be a funny, semi-mocking riff on the inscrutable sacred text. Nicky, a celebrated magazine writer, was game. Silly man.

Then I didn’t hear from him. Weeks and weeks went by. He had fallen, hard, into a three-sided abyss. By the time he pulled himself out, on March 18, he had written — are you sitting down? — 10,000 words. “As you could probably tell, I got a little carried away on my Triangle quest,” he wrote. “No, a lot carried away.”

But I loved every word. It felt like the type of thing our readers crave: the deepest possible reporting and the best possible writing on a surprising subject. No one would see it coming, and they just might fall in love with this truly bizarre corner of the sports landscape, as I had.