Minnesota Timberwolves have one of the brightest young teams in the NBA. They have the two most recent number one overall picks in Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, the reigning slam dunk champion Zach LaVine, a young point guard in Ricky Rubio looking to make an epic comeback from some hampering injuries and some veteran pieces looking to help put it all together for this young squad.
While all that has gone well for Minnesota as of late, there is one negative thing that’s been a sad note for the franchise. President and Head coach Flip Saunders was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma over the summer. The diagnosis forced Saunders to step aside and, Milt Newton is the acting GM and decision maker and Sam Mitchell is the interim head coach.
With Saunders stepping away to treat his condition, there haven’t been many updates on the coach, until now.
Jeffrey Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star Tribune said the following in a live chat with some readers and updated what he knows about Saunders condition.
There’s no question things have changed dramatically since the team announced his diagnosis in August, back when it quoted his doctors saying the cancer was very treatable and curable. Since then there have been changes to the way his body handled the chemotherapy (and maybe how much cancer they’ve found) that have made it life threatening. Everyone involved has gone radio silent because of the family’s request for privacy and federal patient-privacy laws, etc., but between the complete silence, the lack of people visiting as far as I can tell apart from his immediate family and very inner circle while he remains hospitalized here in Minneapolis and the things I’m hearing second-hand, well, none of it is good. I’ll just say this, and this is just my own opinion, if he pulls through this: I doubt very much he’s back this year, it’s probably unlikely he coaches again just because of the stress inherent doing both those jobs and I think there’s a pretty good chance he doesn’t return full time to either job. As far as the franchise goes, that will put them in a holding pattern for some time. I can’t see Glen Taylor allowing Milt Newton and Sam to make a major decision until they know more about Flip’s future and Glen decides who will run his team for the long term. I wouldn’t assume it’ll be Milt and Sam going forward, that’s just for the short term until things become clearer.
Hopefully for Saunders, he can be healthy once again. All the basketball stuff is just nonsense at this point compared to the health of Saunders. Hopefully Flip will be back once again to at least say hello and put his arm around Kevin Garnett, one more time.
