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
accomplish bit carried guys heat juices offensive playing trying
We're trying to accomplish things. Playing a lot of people. Doing some things, playing some full-court pressure, play our bench. But always what happens, when you get in the heat of the battle, competitive juices flow, and our guys got juiced up a bit and really executed defensively and carried over the offensive end.
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.
athletic both defensive extremely offensive shoot spot spread team
They're a different team. Before, they could really spot up and shoot it extremely well and could really spread the floor. Now they're a much more athletic team and try to use their athleticism both on the offensive end and defensive end. They're going through those adjustments right now.
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.