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
almost band becomes guys high knowing level might negative obligation people rock time watch
That's the only negative ? the guys play so well sometimes it becomes too easy. But it's what I said before ? an obligation of entertaining, knowing that when you go into an arena, for some people that might be the only time they watch you play. As a professional you have an obligation to play at a high level ? it's almost like a rock band going on the road.
becomes constant course excitement great happen happy intensity kicks level pressure produce question series
At first you're there, you're happy to be there. ... Then the pressure becomes more to produce as you're there. There's no question that for young players, there's great excitement and enjoyment. But they have to get used to making the constant adjustments that happen over the course of a series and how every game, the intensity level kicks up more and more.
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.
ability available basket both bring creating effective good instant knew offense scoring tony
Tony is in a good rhythm. We knew when he was available what he could bring to the team, and we knew he had the ability to score. I don't think everyone knew he could be effective at both perimeter scoring and going to the basket and creating for other people. Right now, he's kind of our instant offense off the bench.
calm lost playing starters thrown
We lost focus. When you have two starters thrown out in a three-minute span, I wouldn't say you're playing calm at that time.
energy passion picked played seemed terrible
We had terrible energy and terrible passion in the first half. We just seemed very much disinterested, and then we really picked it up and played with more energy.
follow four guys played talk touch unique
We try to talk a little bit, keep in touch every now and then, follow each other's career. It's a unique situation. You have two guys who played with each other, went four years together.
start
We got pretty much what we wanted offensively. Defensively, we were like vultures to start games.
gave guys heat main played quarter third trap turned worked
We got out of it what we wanted. Our main guys played really well, especially in the third quarter when they turned the heat up. We worked on some of our trap defenses that were really effective. Then we gave our young guys some fourth-quarter experience.
active ball bit hands needed tonight
We don't try to get the ball out of guys' hands too much. We did a little bit tonight because we needed to do some things to get active a little bit.
carry consistent high point stretch superstar team turn
We're going through this stretch where every team has a superstar that can carry a team. The consistent thing is that, at some point in the game, we turn it on at an unbelievably high level.
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.