Flip Saunders
Flip Saunders
Philip Daniel "Flip" Saunderswas an American basketball player and coach. During his career, he coached the Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons, and Washington Wizards...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth23 February 1955
CityCleveland, OH
bring bryan mike players situation team
They all bring something to the table. Bryan got the players there. Mike put the players in a situation to be successful. Nash implemented the situation to be successful. They all bring something, and that's what team is all about.
believe
They all believe in Santa. There is a Santa. You have to believe in Santa.
against dog good matter season seems
These are the dog days. The season seems like it will never end at this point. But it seems like no matter who we play, they play pretty good against us.
biggest challenge dog game night pressure run season seems teams throw winning
These are the dog days, because the season seems like it's never going to end. You have to take every game one game at a time. When you're on a big run and winning games, that's the biggest challenge you have -- can you withstand the pressure night in and night out of what teams throw at you?
ability fine game last line main major month needs people scary shot strengths watching weakness win
The scary thing is he's only 21. Watching him when he was younger, I always thought one of his main strengths was the ability to make other people better. That can always be your major weakness if you do that too much. What he's done in the last month is on the fine line of when he needs to take over a game and when he needs to take a shot to win a game.
basically closest column games good loss next satisfying team
The satisfying thing is, right now we've put basically 16 games in the loss column between us and the next closest team in our division. When you can do that with 26 games to go, you're in pretty good shape.
closest division game games next puts satisfying team
The satisfying thing about this game is it puts us 16 games up over our next closest team in the division with 26 to go. That's pretty good.
finals last playing playoff team understand
The thing is, we're not going to change. You have to understand something: This team has a lot of playoff experience. They've been to the Finals the last two years. They're not playing differently than what they've played. That's how they play.
ball beat road turn win yourselves
I've always said that to win on the road you have to defend, you have to not beat yourselves and you have to not turn the ball over.
guys paul pick seemed stuff types
Sometimes in these types of situations, you want to get some organization. I thought that the way these guys play together, they can get some organization. We went through some stuff with Paul (Pierce) and he seemed to pick things up and play well off those guys.
teams turned waiting
Teams are waiting for us to get things turned up. When that happens, that's when we go on our little runs.
ability depends flow guys natural step time
Sometimes it's natural to take a step back a bit. It just depends on the flow of the game. But the one thing he does -- and a lot of our other guys do -- when it comes time to clamp down, he has the ability to do that.
almost believing coaching firing maybe question tendency
Sometimes, I think, when you're fired, you have a tendency to maybe question things that you do. For me, the firing almost entrenched me more in believing that philosophically, from a coaching standpoint, that this was the right way of going about doing it.
four games holding prior reason straight teams tough
The one reason we have been in the games prior to this was because of our defense. We had four (actually three) straight games of holding teams in the 70s. That's pretty tough to do in this league.