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
bad easy job moved pressure situations taken teams walking
I've been in situations where I've taken bad teams and moved them in the right direction. In those situations, there is no pressure. Would it have been easy for me to take another job and not have as much (pressure)? Pressure is what you put on yourself. I don't really feel any pressure walking into a situation.
ball easy move normally tried
We didn't move the ball like we normally do. We got to make easy plays. I thought we tried to make too many spectacular plays. We've got to make easy plays. We had 21 fast-break points; we could have had 40.
ball corners extra movement player playing shots shows taking
When we're taking shots from the corners and we did a lot tonight, that shows we are playing a lot of ball movement, a lot of player movement and making the extra pass. That's pretty much how you'd want to play offensively.
ball good moved overall
We moved the ball well, had 35 assists, 12 turnovers and rebounded the ball well. We had a good overall performance.
against ball both defense defensive game great lock minnesota movement offensive player reason side success
It's going to be a great challenging game for both teams. They are a great defensive team, but the reason we had some success in Minnesota was because of offensive ball movement and player movement. They want to lock you down on one side of the floor. If you can get the defense moving, you can have some success against them.
ball considered games move played playoff
We played 82 games that we considered playoff basketball. That's the way we're going to play. We're going to defend, we're going to move the ball offensively, and that's why I told our guys.
area ball bit couple improvement involved less move pass people quick reasons runs shots though took won
We took, I thought, too many quick shots. We took 50 shots with one pass or less out of 75 shots, which for us is way too many. And that's one of the reasons we only had 17 assists. Even though we won by 18, they made a couple of runs at us, and I think we have a big area of improvement to get more people involved offensively and move the ball a little bit more.
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.