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
bench conscious create effort games last role three won
Two of the last three games that we won were because of our bench, and (Sunday) night, our bench got us in the game. We say we're going to make a very conscious effort to play them, create a role for them, create a niche, create an identity, and I think that's what we've done.
capitalize last won
We've won 22 of our last 24. You play 82 games, and you don't like to say you didn't have it, but we didn't have it tonight. We didn't capitalize on our opportunities down the stretch.
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,
basketball definitely learning maybe minutes played supposed won
I thought we played maybe 10 to 13 minutes of championship basketball tonight. We didn't play how we're supposed to play, even down the stretch. We won the game, but there were definitely some learning experiences.
basketball might minutes played won work
I thought we might have played 10 to 13 minutes of championship basketball tonight. We won the game, but there are things we need to work on.
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.
people reason remember talking tigers win won
People have been talking about 35-5 and the Tigers a lot lately, but the reason that people remember it is that they won the championship. If we don't win the title, no one will remember that we were 35-5.
accept five job minutes open team time whatever winning within won
Any time you take a job where a team won the championship and got within five minutes of winning another, you wonder, how are they going to accept you? But they've been very open to coaching, very open to doing whatever we've asked.
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.