Wolves remember Flip Saunders: ‘We lost our point guard’

A native of Cleveland, Saunders, the 1973 Class A High School Player of the Year and Ohio’s Mr. Basketball, arrived on campus that fall and found his way into the record books among the all-time Golden Gopher greats.

After practice Monday, Carlisle expounded on Saunders’ legacy. And I was always very impressed with watching the way he worked on the fundamentals as a coach. Not only sad for his family, Minnesota, the Timberwolves and the community there, but for the basketball community in general. Lost a really good one yesterday. My prayers are with his family.

In addition to his 11 seasons with the Wolves, Saunders coached at Detroit and Washington as well.

Over the course of two stints with the team Saunders coached the Wolves for 11 seasons and had been in his role as president of basketball operations for two. Love was making All-Star trips and putting up incredible individual numbers, but the losses and lottery trips were taking a toll. Soon after the team landed the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 draft, which wound up being Karl-Anthony Towns, Saunders got his cancer diagnosis and the news only got worse from there before he passed away on Sunday.

“Flip you were one of a kind”. “Still young, great coach, great basketball mind”.

Saunders’ time in Washington will probably be overlooked during the glowing eulogies that are written about him over the next several days.

To honor Coach Saunders, the NBA Coaches Association will dedicate the coming NBA season to his memory and during games all Coaches will wear a special “Flip” lapel pin. He would reach three Eastern Conference finals with Detroit. When he returned to the organization after 10 years away, he recounted a story about working for ESPN and being asked why he still lived in Minnesota so long after he was sacked. “It’s unfortunate that it had to happen to someone in our fraternity, someone that’s very respected”.

He started 101 of his 103 games while in college at the University of Minnesota, playing on a team with Ray Williams, Mychal Thompson and Kevin McHale his senior season, went an incredible 56-0 at home while coaching Golden Valley Lutheran College and won two CBA championships.

Current and former National Basketball Association players and coaches have expressed their sadness and sent out their condolences to the Saunders family through social media or other means of communication. Recently coach Sam Mitchell stated that Wiggins would start the season as the off-guard, rather than the small forward.

“He put a nice face on our franchise”, says Heineman, who stayed in touch with his former coach even after Saunders was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in August and began chemotherapy treatments. “He recruited the players, the staff and was a friend of mine”.

“My heartfelt sympathies go out to Flip’s family and the countless number of people who were impacted by his kindness”. “He will be remembered without question”.