TWO Sundays ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves were holding practice when General Manager Milt Newton announced the sad news from team owner Glen Taylor that the franchise’s greatest coach and one of Minnesota’s greatest sons, Philip “Flip” Saunders, succumbed to cancer (Hidgkin’s Lymphoma) at the age of 60.
ESPN.com quoted Jon Krawczynski of the Associated Press who described what exactly happened when the Timberwolves got news of Saunders’s demise, “The Timberwolves had started to practice on Sunday when Newton got word from Taylor of Saunders’s death. Practice was halted and a devastated Kevin Garnett left the floor, walked to the parking garage at the practice facility and sat down in the spot marked for Saunders.”
Garnett posted the image of Saunders on his Facebook and Instagram accounts with the caption, “Forever in my heart.”
Saunders was responsible for drafting Garnett, a skinny and wiry kid straight out of high school in 1995. His coaching experience spans almost 40 years from 1977 all the way up to the time of his death several days ago. He is the winningest coach in Timberwolves history. He is one of only 10 coaches in National Basketball Association (NBA) history to coach a team to an Eastern Conference Finals and a Western Conference Finals.
Consider Saunders’s 38-year coaching record: a Big Ten Championship for his alma mater, the University of Minnesota; championships in the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association (CBA); coached the Timberwolves to the Western Conference Finals in 2004, to three straight trips to the Eastern Conference Finals with the Detroit Pistons from 2005 to 2008; after a coaching stint with the Washington Wizards, he returned to the Timberwolves organization in 2014 as its part owner, president and head coach.
According to the NBA Coaches’ Association and Dallas Mavericks Head Coach Rick Carlisle, all NBA coaches will wear a lapel pin to honor Saunders for the rest of the season. Los Angeles Clippers Coach Glenn “Doc” Rivers called Saunders “a coach’s coach.” Everyone from the governor of Minnesota to former and current players of Saunders paid heartwarming tributes through social media to a coach and a man who touched their lives.
Flip Saunders was the Timberwolves organization’s Knight in shining armor.
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THE other Knight I’m referring to is more of a local knight, a Letran Knight in fact.
Aldin Ayo, upon being hired as the new head coach that will lead the Letran College basketball program wasn’t even recognized by the security guards even more so by the players who were to play for him, but this early setback did not discourage the native of Sorsogon from bringing the National Collegiate Athletic Association title back to the Murall a campus.
In their team-building activity before the season started, Ayo confidently predicted to the chagrin of his very own players that they would win it all this year. His kids, on the other hand, would be satisfied by just reaching the final four, but Ayo had other plans and ideas.
All those ideas and plans came to fruition on October 29 when his “mayhem and chaotic” defense and freestyle run-and-gun offense wreaked havoc on the five-year juggernaut that is the San Beda offense and defense which, when it was ultimately unraveled, resulted in the dethronement of the then-reigning champions.
An 85-82 overtime victory knighted (pun intended) these Knights for bragging rights for at least a year until somebody takes them down.
Congratulations are in order to Coach Aldin Ayo and his boys. To the Letran community, Sir Aldin Ayo and his boys are their Knights in shining armor.