Timberwolves mourn passing of coach Flip Saunders as they open season

LOS ANGELES – As the Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers ended their moment of silence for Flip Saunders prior to Wednesday's season opener, heralded rookie Karl-Anthony Towns pointed toward the heavens to the coach he never got to play for.

Saunders, who was the Timberwolves' president and coach, died Sunday at age 60 from Hodgkin's lymphoma. Minnesota played its first regular-season game since Saunders' passing in its opener on Wednesday night against the Lakers. Saunders' family is expected to have a private funeral in Minneapolis in the near future.

"Everybody is going through a grieving process and that's not something you can circumvent in times like this," T'wolves general manager Milt Newton told Yahoo Sports. "But Flip brought us all here, staff, players. If you know Flip, he'd want you to continue to march toward the goal that we have. And we just have to remind our guys that the best way to honor him is to compete, play hard and leave it all on the floor, play together, be unselfish and play 'we ball' instead of 'me ball.' "

The Timberwolves wore shooting shirts with "WE" on them in honor of Saunders that will be donned through September. The Lakers also wore a shooting shirt emblazoned with "Flip".

Minnesota's players will begin wearing a "Flip" patch on their jerseys this season in Monday's home opener against the Portland Trail Blazers. The Timberwolves are expected to have a pregame ceremony in honor of Saunders that night.

"It's something that in your own time you reflect about and think about," T'wolves interim coach Sam Mitchell said. "I had the good fortune of playing for Flip. I enjoyed playing for Flip. I learned a lot from it. I often found myself regurgitating a lot of the stuff he had to say as a player. I did that [while coaching] in Toronto.

"Coach brought us all here for a reason. And he would expect nothing less than us coming out and being focused and doing the very best job."

The Timberwolves also honored Saunders with their play, beating the Lakers 112-111.

"Even if he's gone," Timberwolves point guard Ricky Rubio said, "he will stay with us forever."

The Timberwolves found out about Saunders' passing from Newton Sunday in the middle of a practice that abruptly ended. "It's been a long week," Towns said.

New Timberwolves guard Andre Miller said Saunders convinced him to sign during a late-July lunch in Minneapolis after selling him on mentoring the young players. Prior to his passing, Saunders occasionally text messaged the players.

"He would send a couple quotes and it would say, 'I will bust your butts when training camp starts, come in shape,' in group text messages," Miller said. "And then after that he sent a message that he was dealing with some issues, he would be away from the team but he would be back for training camp. That's the last I heard from him."

Saunders' 17-season NBA coaching tenure included two stops with the Timberwolves, in addition to jobs with the Detroit Pistons and the Washington Wizards. He also led the Timberwolves to eight straight playoff appearances while coaching Kevin Garnett.

"I learned you could combine high-level basketball with having a lot of fun," said former Timberwolves forward Mark Madsen, now a Lakers assistant coach. "Every practice was fun. Every practice was competitive. He demanded perfection and a level of attention to detail. He demanded multiple efforts. And if you did that, it was a lot of fun."