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Flip Saunders, longtime coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, passed away on Sunday at the age of 60. The T'wolves president was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma earlier in 2015.
Tragic, tragic news. I was hoping that he would beat this terrible disease. I didn't know much about him, but he never did anything that rubbed me the wrong way. Sad to hear.
Flip coached in the CBA for the Sioux Falls Skyforce prior to making it in the NBA. He made such a positive influence while he was in SF and occasionally came back for PR as this is Timberwolves territory.
I went to a seminar once in a tiny gym in SF that he put on for youths in an advanced basketball league my son was playing in. He was fantastic. While talking basketball he kept shooting from the left edge of the free throw line. He never missed. Had to have hit 25 straight and he wasn't even concentrating.
Flip discussed dribbling and how he got better. As a kid he used to dribble up and down a stairway. Then he'd shut the lights off and do it in the dark.
The kids were very motivated after his session. The man was born to teach basketball.
I was watching ESPN's Around The Horn a bit ago and panelist Frank Iola told a story on him. About how he talked to Coach Saunders on the same day as this years NBA draft. And how he was upbeat, not talking about himself, just being overly enthusiastic like always about the draft and about the NBA in general.
If there was anybody who came up with the statement "coaching is teaching" it surely would be Flip Saunders.
words can't express how sad his passing is to me, one theme that was repeated over and over among the local sports media was how he reached out to the many members in town here on a personal level that transcended the typical arms length relationship and expressed a genuine caring of their personal lives. John Krazinsky (AP Sports Guy) told on Dann Barrerio's afternoon KFAN show of Flip's concern during John's wife's pregnancy and that he called asking for updates more often than John's own mother.
While always a home grown sports fan of the area's teams, I was never a big basketball fan on a national level. But when ever I caught Dan with the Funkadelic on I never changed the channel because he was such an upbeat and honest interview and I think I learned an awful lot about basketball and life listening to Flip.
I still remember Flip as a key member of a University of Minnesota in the mid 70's, that included Mychal Thompson and Kevin McHale, that established that team as the greatest team to ever play at the barn. Happy that he got a chance with the T-Wolves and never rooted so hard for an opposing team in any sport as when he moved on to coach at Detroit.
The news was pretty hopeful even when he was diagnosed with cancer this summer, thinking that he would take some time off and be back to join the team after he beat this. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard of his passing this Sunday.
I didn't even know he was ill. Very sad news... R.I.P Coach!!
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