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
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.
contested good help job might rip send tried understanding
Rip did a good job of understanding where help might be, tried to send him to as much help as he could and contested pretty much most of his shots.
couple exhibition games good guys last lost recall regular start
I think I recall that we lost our last couple games in the exhibition season, and we got off to a pretty good start with the regular season. These guys have been there. They know that this is when it all begins.
career defense expose guys matter
It didn't matter if (Bryant) had 50, 40, 20, 10 ? the idea was for us to win. The idea was not to try to expose our defense where all the sudden, you have other guys that have career games.
coming five minutes question receptive team winning won
I thought, 'You're coming to a team that just won a championship and was five minutes away from winning another,' so your question is how receptive will they be to what you want to do,
bad capitalize chance mentally minute played somewhat
I thought we were not as mentally alert. We played somewhat out of character, but as bad as we played we still had a chance with a minute to go. We didn't capitalize on our opportunities down the stretch. You play 82 games, and you don't like to say you didn't have it, but we didn't have it tonight.
check id number paycheck step
I think the number one thing with young players, you got to get them to play hard. When you step on the court, they don't check your paycheck to see how much you make, and they don't check your ID to see how old you are.
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.
becomes court eastern extremely home maybe playoff situations
I thought for playoff situations that was maybe the most important, to have home court in the Eastern Conference. With the way that it's set up, 2-2-1-1-1, I think home court becomes extremely important.
basketball bit fourth great nba plays quarter saw
I thought, especially for our league, the fourth quarter was a great quarter. They saw a little bit about what NBA basketball is about: great plays by great players.
bench extend game guys last situation stay
Last night's game was a big game just because it put us up (9 1/2 games) with 15 to go. Now we're in a situation where we want to try and extend our bench a little bit, get those guys more minutes, and get our guys where we can stay competitive and fresh.
against dog energy gaudy hard levels record season seems takes team
I was disappointed in the defense, and I told them that at halftime. These are the dog days, when it seems like the season is never going to end, and it takes a while to get your energy levels up. And when you have a gaudy record like we do, every team is going to come out hard against you.
concerned everywhere except friday miami past people played sunday talked talking three walked
I was concerned because everywhere you walked the past three days, that's all people talked about. They didn't even know we played Friday night. I think most of the people were talking about Sunday -- except the TVs. They were talking about Miami and the Lakers.
came concerned couple guys heard machine mention might morning overlook played stuff
I was concerned because at shoot-around this morning I heard a couple of guys mention some stuff about Miami. I was concerned we might overlook Atlanta. But we came out and played like a well-oiled machine in the first half.