AP PhotoYahoo! Sports reports that Flip Saunders, formerly the head coach of the Detroit Pistons and Minnesota Timberwolves, will be the next head coach of the Wizards. League sources told Yahoo! Sports that Saunders comes to the team on a four-year, $18 million deal. Saunders — who has done pretty much everything one can do in terms of coaching professional basketball but win a NBA championship — will take over the helms after this season is up, an away game from now. Current interim coach Ed Tapscott will likely return to the front office.
Saunders, whom the Wizards have been chasing after for quite some time, is a fine coach — his resume includes a 587-396 career record. He took the Pistons to their best regular-season record (64-18 in the 2005-06 season) and led the previously moribund Timberwolves to their first playoff appearance in 1996-97 and to 50 wins in both the 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 seasons. Saunders also knows how to work with young players exceedingly well, fostering Kevin Garnett and others — an ability that stems from his time in the “minor-league” Continental Basketball Association, of which he is considered the best coach of all time, winning two titles and promoting 23 players to the NBA.
That said, Saunders’ reputation as a solid coach has done little to prevent him from getting tough breaks during his career. His dismissals from both the Pistons and T’Wolves were incredibly questionable at best: his departure from Minnesota owes to a Molotov cocktail of exceedingly poor front office management and maniacally egotistical players. His Detroit dismissal can be attributed to, well, terribly unlucky playoff matchups: He couldn’t get past Dwayne Wade’s Heat in 2006, LeBron James in 2007, or Boston’s Big Three last year. Not many other coaches could, either, but he was nevertheless fired in Detroit. Canning him has clearly paid dividends: In their first season after Saunders’ departure, Detroit barely made the playoffs and will finish under .500.
Their loss, the Wizards’ gain — as far as this team goes, Saunders is probably the best hire that the Wizards could have made. Of course, things can only get better for the team: With a solid nucleus returning next season and a very high lottery pick in the bag, Flip should have plenty to work with to return the team to respectability.
