For various boring reasons,
it has been many years since I have actually posted a blog. My writing is
rather rusty, and my grammar may not be up to par, but the loss of Flip
Saunders was something that I felt compelled to blog about, so here goes…
It felt like a punch in the
gut. I had avoided the internet all day since I was watching football later on
my Tivo, so I was feeling fairly chipper about the Vikings comeback win in Detroit
Flip was 60, which of
course, isn’t that old, with the energy of a 20-year-old, seemingly in the
shape of a 30-year-old, aside from this “treatable and curable” Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
diagnosis that he was given in June 2015, which we found out about two months
later in August. Flip had just lost his 93-year-old dad Walter Saunders in May
(the man who continued to wear Timberwolves clothing even as his son sent him
gear from the Pistons and then the Wizards); it couldn’t be Flip’s turn to go
already. Flip had come back in 2013 to rescue his former franchise, the
Minnesota Timberwolves, in his adopted home state, and had a huge impact in
just 2 years, on player personnel, practice facilities, work culture and fan
excitement, making his mark in every facet of the organization as the Head
Coach/President of Basketball Operations/Partial Owner. There was no way he
could be gone this fast, before getting to see his plans come to fruition. But
it was written there in black and white, over and over and over; CNN, ESPN, AP
News, Yahoo Sports, Score , USA Minnesota
Like most Minnesotans, I
didn’t actually know Flip Saunders. I had “met” him once 16 or 17 years ago
while I was working at the Ridgedale/Minnetonka Best Buy, when he asked me to
help him find a DVD. I wished his team good luck, and he graciously thanked me.
That was it. But like most Minnesotans, I loved Flip Saunders. How can we have
strong feelings about someone we don’t even know? While I am no expert, I have
taken a number of psychology classes, and have read countless behavioral
articles over the years, which have taught me, well…nothing. It seems as if
there are more theories to explain this than there are stars in the sky, but there
is no logical reason for us to feel an attachment to a person we have never
truly interacted with, and have only watched from our couches or bleachers, but
logic has nothing to do with it. Perhaps it is because sports give us something
to be passionate about without having many “real world” implications. With
passion and emotion comes a form of attachment, which is manifested in our love
of players (and for those of us too young to have seen him play, our love of a
coach). But really, what does it matter why we feel this way? We just do. It
might not be logical, but I know I am not the only Minnesota Minnesota ,
yet he was a quintessential Minnesotan: loyal, kind, hard-working, generous,
friendly, humble, and of course [Minnesota Detroit , Washington
& Bristol , Connecticut ,
but he chose to keep his family base in his adopted home state, telling his
ESPN colleagues who wondered why he stayed in the state so long after he had
been fired by the Timberwolves “Well, you don’t really understand unless you’re from Minnesota.You don’t really get it. Even when it snows on May 3 you don’t really get it.And the loyalty and the passion that the people have here is what always drives me back.” We finally got him back here to save our basketball team from the
destruction that began the year he left with the sour attitudes and unhappy
contract situations of certain players, and the even more hopeless scenario
that developed during the dubious tenure of David Kahn. As Star Tribune
columnist Patrick Reusse wrote last week, Flip was “our point guard.”
Perhaps I am wrong, but I
got the sense that the majority of Minnesota Timberwolves fans also trusted
Flip Saunders to resurrect our team. We may have questioned drafting a
controversial player like Shabazz Muhammad, but we trusted Flip’s judgment,
maybe because he didn’t just give the party line about Shabazz being the player
they wanted all along – he admitted that he had his own doubts about the former
high school superstar who by this time was best known for his selfish style of
play at UCLA and lying about his age. Unlike the “throwing darts at the wall”
type of personnel management of the David Kahn era (Jonny Flynn over Steph
Curry? Ugh…), Flip seemed to have a plan, and we believe in Flip, and believe
that Flip knows what he is doing, and that Flip cares. Then when Flip managed
to turn a disgruntled Kevin Love into 2014 #1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins, we
felt like the tide was turning. He later convinced Timberwolves legend and
future NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett to waive his no-trade clause and come
back to the team where he grew up, to be a mentor to the young players, and a
role model who has won it all, and knows what it takes to be a champion. (After
all, “Anything is possibbbbbbllllllleeeee!!!!”).
When Minnesota finally won
the NBA Draft Lottery this year for the first time in franchise history, despite
being in position to win countless times in the past (while never so much as
even moving up one spot), it seemed like the curse was lifted. As he drafted
Karl-Anthony Towns #1, a player with seemingly unlimited upside whose
interviews showed the maturity of someone twice his age, and then negotiated a
trade to bring hometown star Tyus Jones back to a Minnesota team after one year
in Durham, NC, running the Duke Blue Devils offense and being named the Most
Outstanding Player of the Final Four in their successful championship run, it
truly seemed like things were going our way. Perhaps Target Center wasn’t built
on Indian burial grounds after all, as many fans have jokingly suggested (and
perhaps some conspiracy theorists thought was actually true), looking for some
explanation for the continual absence of any good luck, and an all too steady
stream of bad luck that seemed to follow the team. When we found out that Flip
was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, it just seemed like a minor speed bump,
as doctors described it as a very treatable and very curable cancer. Plus he
had already been getting treatments at Mayo Clinic for nearly 2 months, all while
continuing to run the team without any noticeable difficulty. A cancer with a 5
year survival rate of 85-95% (per various articles posted in the past 9 days)
was certainly not going to take out a guy like Flip Saunders just months after
his diagnosis, especially not now, after the Murphy’s Law scenarios that
perpetually dragged down the Wolves had finally been defeated. We had heard
Flip tell the media during spring that the fact that Kevin Garnett had not done
everything possible to try to play in the last couple games on the schedule,
was a good sign that KG was planning to return for his 21st season.
We never imagined that Flip would be the one that we would never again see on
the Timberwolves bench.
Yet here we are, just 2
months after learning of this very beatable cancer battle that Flip was
fighting, and he is already gone. It just doesn’t seem fair to Minnesota
As fans, we obviously can’t
mourn for him in the same way as people who truly knew him, but that does not
mean that we don’t have the right to feel sadness about losing him, or to
already miss his impact on our lives as followers of Minnesota Minnesota
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