Heck, Phil's triangle offense predicated on eliminating Michael as the point man.
One of the great basketball stories of the Chicago Bulls is that the Triangle Offense was build around Scottie Pippen and
NOT Michael Jordan. Phil Jackson knew Jordan could score. He knew he could score when doubled and often tripled. But he could only score 40 to 60 points consistently in a game and come playoff time, that just wasn't going to be good enough. Doug Collins had gotten plenty of offense out of Jordan earlier. He'd milked the Jordan offensive talent machine to DEATH and watched the Milwaukee Bucks advance.
Jackson knew that teams would plan Jordan and strategize to shut him down. What the Bulls needed was a way to capitalize on that defensive strategy. Enter Scotty Pippen and (Early on) B.J. Armstrong (as I remember it.) Kerr came later.
Pippen was a solid player out of Alabama, a decent mid range shooter, but he wasn't a tremendous threat to overwhelm a team all by himself. However what Pippen was amazing at was slashing to the basket. Either with the ball or without, Pippen had a natural
need to slash to the basket. The Triangle Offense created a mismatch because teams needed to cheat at least one if not two players toward Jordan at all times. If you didn't do that, you were simply conceding the point. But when you did, Pippen could fly to the basket WITH the ball, or he could receive a pass from Jordan (an excellent passer) or one of the other guards and Pippen's best talent was finishing the drive down the lane.
This caused huge problems for defenses. Now they had to cheat carefully on Jordan, because Pippen was so good at playing off the ball or taking advantage of the coverage if he was given a step.
That's where the third point of the triangle came in. The Triangle offense requires a lethal 3 point shooter to bring it all together. First it was Armstrong, and later Steve Kerr. When Jordan wasn't going ahead and using the poor fellows assigned to him, or when Pippen wasn't flying through the lane for a layup or pulling up for a medium range jumper, then one of them was able to find the 3rd point of the triangle, often poorly covered as the defenses scrambled to deal with the firepower in the middle of the floor.
That was the beauty of the triangle, and Scottie Pippen actually made it all work. It was built around him, ironically enough.