Flip Saunders Quotes on Opportunity (11 Quotes)

I want to win. My thing was not what this team has done in the past, it's what we have an opportunity to do in the future. So, my decision came pretty easy.

One of the strengths of this team is we grind it defensively but we get fast break points. We have the opportunity to get points in the open floor.

I would hope there would be at least three, maybe more. As coaches, we talk about team play, how important it is. This is an opportunity from a league standpoint to show to people - whether it's college kids or high school kids or AAU kids - how important team play really is. It's a very rare opportunity you'd have as a league to maybe put five guys from one team in.

We said going in the idea was to not get anybody hurt and make sure that the guys we had to play broke a sweat and didn't get too stale and give our young guys an opportunity to play in a heated situation against some top players.

Very much so. It's something as coaches that we're not used to. You don't really go through that very much. I guess I would liken it to maybe the last week of the exhibition season when you're trying to get ready for the regular season. You want to improve and you want to keep sharp, you want to give people opportunities, you want to be competitive and you still want to win.

Every time I go into a game I have, I don't know if you want to call it a cheat sheet or whatever, but I have a list of plays that I'm probably going to run that night. And there's no question that this last week that list has been a lot shorter as far as things we're going to run. There's some things we've put in, some wrinkles in some situations and maybe we'll lay away from some of those not to give them an extra scouting opportunity.

Same thing. We don't want to get anybody hurt. Just let guys get a sweat and give some of our young players an opportunity.

He's really been focused. He's a guy who is getting into his later years and when you think you have an opportunity to win a championship, you want to take advantage of it. Time is running out and I think he looks at that.

I don't always judge things by wins and losses. I just go by how you play and the opportunities to win. We played 51 games, and out of those 51 we had nine losses and probably only three of those games where we basically didn't have opportunities to win in the fourth quarter.

What they're going to try to do is do what they did during the season, try to get more off open-floor, transition-type opportunities, and try to attack that way and not have to go against our half-court defense as much. That will probably be their biggest adjustment.

I think everyone thought he had the opportunity to be a good player. I thought he was a good player when I came here, but I never understood how good he was until I saw him day in and day out. His commitment to the game, his commitment to the team, and just how versatile he is.