I won't pretend I knew Flip Saunders well. We were just getting to like each other when he was stricken.
In my limited gallery of personal snapshots of Flip, I'll remember two, the agony and the ecstasy of being a basketball boss and a basketball lifer.
When the Timberwolves landed the top pick in the 2015 NBA draft, Flip cried, partly because he had just lost his father, partly because he knew what such a stroke of fortune for the luckless Wolves would mean for his father's son.
A few weeks later, I ran into Flip in the Skyway outside the Timberwolves' offices. He was heading to work. I was heading to Target Field. He offered his hand and stopped to offer a scouting breakdown on his options with the first pick. The conversation was brief and off the record. His joy — yes, joy — at presiding over perhaps the most promising era in franchise history was obvious. He was in his element.
Flip's life is a reminder that there is a story behind every coach, and general manager, we observe. Flip's was remarkable.
A friend of mine calls suburban basketball players "Garage shooters," because that's what we did when we were young — shoot at baskets attached to garages. Flip grew up a garage shooter in Ohio, but he wasn't the stereotypical suburban jump-shooter.
He developed a handle that made him an excellent college point guard with the Gophers, and a basketball intellect that led naturally to coaching.
He earned his old-school Converse stripes in the Continental Basketball Association, handling menial tasks and riding buses when he wasn't drawing up plays, and his hunger for the big time only grew.
