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
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.
anxiety days dog guys multiply prior situation somewhere teams top tough upset week
The dog days are always the 10 days prior to All-Star break. That's always a tough time. You see a lot of teams get upset because guys say, 'OK, I've got a week off, I'm going somewhere for All-Star break.' Multiply that on top of our situation of guys wondering, 'Well, am I going to be an All-Star or not?' There's always that anxiety of wondering.
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.
difference guard guys playing shape teams
He's playing and getting in shape and he makes a difference in games. Guys on opposing teams typically don't want Lindsey to guard them.
coming course game happened heals hurt last seem team time year
Coming in from the outside, you could see that this team was hurt from what happened last year in Game 7. Sometimes you think over the course of time, they say that time heals wounds. But time just didn't seem to heal that wound.
adversity built challenged love people rise team types
I think the one thing that people underestimate is that when there's adversity and they become challenged they rise up to the occasion. They love those types of situations. That's why this team is built for the playoffs.
college five guys high hope kids league maybe opportunity people rare school standpoint talk team whether
I would hope there would be at least three, maybe more. As coaches, we talk about team play, how important it is. This is an opportunity from a league standpoint to show to people - whether it's college kids or high school kids or AAU kids - how important team play really is. It's a very rare opportunity you'd have as a league to maybe put five guys from one team in.
coming difficult enjoy love team work
I think if I didn't enjoy this team so much and wasn't having so much fun, things could become really difficult with being away from my family. But everything is fine. I love coming to work every day.
conference developed few good gotten teams western
Part of it is teams that were not very good have gotten better, which makes for a much more competitive conference. What developed for a few years in the Western Conference has now come back to the East, where there aren't really any gimme games.
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.
beat breathing contest great job jump looks position produce reasons rip team teams top
Rip did a great job and Redd didn't have a lot of breathing room. One of the reasons we aren't a big fouling team is that we don't produce a lot of steals. We don't jump out and we don't gamble. We play position defense. That's why so often our man-to-man looks like a zone. We try to make teams beat us over the top and contest every shot.
great guys main national playing stronger team
He's playing pretty good. He's been playing with the main guys and I think he's a lot stronger and obviously, playing on his national team (Serbia-Montenegro) this summer, he's in great condition.
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.
basically both saw teams
You saw both teams as basically who they are - both meat-and-potato teams.