In 1988 when Brett Brown was a young coach just starting his career in Australia, he wrote a letter to a Continental Basketball Association coach in La Crosse, Wisconsin that he had been hearing a lot about.
That coach? Flip Saunders.
“You started reading about how successful he was and how they did a heckuva job with sponsorships and marketing,” Brown said after Monday’s practice. “Foreign basketball is all about coaching basketball and interacting with the fans like minor league baseball.
“So in La Crosse there was the tremendous story about winning and these big crowds. So in 1988, I wrote a letter to their coach and I got a quick letter back inviting me to go from Australia and visit with him. So in 1988, I spent a week in La Crosse with Flip Saunders. I spent a lot of time talking with him about coaching and marketing and integrating the community and their fans.”
Saunders, the general manager and coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves, died on Sunday from Hodgkin lymphoma. He was 60.
Brown remembered Saunders fondly and the relationship that began in 1988 from a letter.
“He was very generous with me from the start,” Brown said. “Throughout my NBA years, he and [San Antonio Spurs coach Gergg Popovich] were very close. My first year [with San Antonio] we played [Minnesota] in the quarterfinals and just throughout the years you respected him.”
Saunders coached in the CBA from 1988 to 1995 before joining the Timberwolves in 1995. It was with Minnesota in 1995 that Saunders took Kevin Garnett with the No. 5 overall pick in the draft and built the team into a contender.
Saunders also coached the Pistons from 2005 to 2008 and the Wizards from 2009 to 2012. In 2013, Saunders returned to Minnesota as the president of basketball operations and named himself head coach in 2014.
As a player, Saunders played alongside Kevin McHale, Mychal Thompson and Ray Williams with the University of Minnesota. But it was coaching in the NBA where Saunders made his mark as a offensive guru.
“To survive 17 years in the NBA as a head coach is hard and to lose a man of his character and his experience and my personal connection, [Sunday] was a sad day for the basketball community,” Brown said.