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
days expected gone needed second seven tough
They are always tough ones, when you've been gone for seven days and you come back and are expected to win. I thought we executed when we needed to - in the second half.
again amazed beat ben catalyst defensive player score tough year
Ben is our energy. I would be amazed if he wasn't the defensive player of the year again just from everything he does. He's our lock-down guy. When we have energy, we are tough to beat and tough to score on. When we don't, we can be pretty ordinary. And Ben is usually the catalyst for that energy.
carry good people tougher
We've had different people carry us at different times. That's what has made this a very good team, and has made us tougher to play against.
tough
We made him take a lot of tough shots.
accept compete matter players road tough win
You have to have players that really accept challenges, that like to compete and really like to play on the road more than they do at home. It is more challenging. It's tough to win on the road, no matter who you play.
level super tough
When you play 82 games, it's tough to play at a super, super level every game.
high level mountains playing tough
When you play 82 games, it's tough to play at an unbelievably high level all 82 games. Right now we're playing at a high level. Our level that we're playing at is where many teams' mountains are.
coming players toughest wants
It's one of those things, if you put him out there for 10 minutes, he wants 15. If you put him out there for 15, he wants 20. That's the toughest thing about young players coming to championship-caliber teams.
changed contain last league people rules touch toughest
Everyone can get better. You can always get better rebounding-wise. The toughest thing in our league is, with the way the rules have changed from last year, where you have to contain people out on the perimeter, and you can't touch people. That's always something that's very difficult.
fair tough tougher
It's tough. It's always tough to play on the road. It's even tougher when you feel you aren't getting a fair shake.
game half ourselves played road seattle shake tough
It's always tough to play on the road and I thought Seattle played really, really well. This is always a tough place to play. We were able to get ourselves back in the game in the first half but we just could not shake them.
guys tough toughest
We were all guards. And it makes it tough to get all those guys a lot of minutes. That's always the toughest thing.
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.
cities early games grind knew leading playing road tough trying
Before the season, we said there were going to be two tough stretches -- being on the road so much early and this one, where we are playing 10 games in 10 different cities leading into the break. We knew it would be tough. We're just trying to grind our way through.