Catching up with Flip: A conversation about this and that

I sat down with Flip Saunders on Thursday afternoon to do reporting for my Sunday draft preview story and pieces that will run next week leading up to next Thursday's draft.

I'm saving all the Kevin Love and draft-specific stuff until then, but here's a bunch of this and that from our conversation:

* I asked him if he's going to need to move players other than Love because, with players still to be added through a Love trade and the draft, of a surplus of players at, say, small forward.

"It depends," he said. "Is Luc Mbah a Moute a small forward or a power forward? The other small forward basically are '2' guards: Corey, Bud, Shabazz, Kevin Martin and then Luc slides over (to power forward). You look at Alexey. He can probably play both (guard spots) and you have the two point guards. I don't think our roster is overly unbalanced now. We've got three guys who are basically centers."

* He said he envisions centers Gorgui Dieng and Ronny Turiaf both playing some at power forward and said he thinks Nikola Pekovic and Dieng can play together some, with Pek at center and Dieng mobile enough to defend out on the floor at the power-forward spot.

"I think you can play them (together),' he said. "I think that's probably something we've work on a lot this summer, to see Gorgui's ability to play out on the floor a little bit more. I always say what position you are is who you can guard and I think he can guard 4s."

* Saunders said he expects Dieng, Shved and Muhammad to play at Vegas Summer League next month. He also wants Chase Budinger to come to Minneapolis for three days of practice before and possibly even play a couple games in Vegas so Saunders and his staff can see how Budinger's knee rehab is going.

* Saunders said Dieng has gained weight -- some 10, 15 pounds -- and Muhammad has lost some (7 or 8 pounds) and he'd like to see both continue to progress in that area.

* He said he hasn't decided who will coach the Vegas games, but added they'll probably switch the duties around. That could mean just-named assistants Sidney Lowe and Sam Mitchell could coach a game or two, as could Saunders' son Ryan, who hasn't been officially hired yet.

He said David Adelman, who has a year left on his contract, will be on the staff but hasn't decided yet whether Bobby Jackson will be back as player development coach or who might fill that role or roles.

* He did confirm he went to Chicago Tuesday to watch Creighton small forward Doug McDermott and Michigan guard Nik Stauskas work out and said he has gone to see other prospect(s) work out but wouldn't say who.

* A bit more about when I asked him if there's a chance he'll trade that 13th overall pick.

* He appears to be targeting shooting -- I hear McDermott, Stauskas and Adreian Payne all are high on his list -- but reiterated that he feels the team needs to add two-way players -- i.e. guys who can play defense, too -- most to this roster.

"You still need to add shooting, you can never have too much shooting," he said. "I mean, you can look at it different ways. We had trouble shooting last year but we scored a lot of points. We may have had trouble shooting, but we rebounded the hell out of it and we got to the free-throw line. You want to find that balance. I don't think you totally want to substitute shooting where we have one-way type players, though."