Even with an hour remaining before this afternoon’s trade deadline, I think it was safe to talk to head coach Flip Saunders. I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere, right?
But Saunders didn’t come to Washington to build a team from scratch. In fact, it was the exact opposite. The Wizards were already built, and assuming they were healthy, they were going to be competitive even before Mike Miller and Randy Foye arrived just before the 2009 draft. When they did arrived, that simply solidified that Washington was ready to win this year at all costs. Ernie Grunfeld went all in.
And busted, badly.
Where does that leave Flip? He now essentially has a clean canvas — depending, of course, on what happens with Gilbert Arenas after his sentencing on March 26 — and the chance to lay the first brick, because there is no foundation, and fully rebuild the Wizards over the long term.
“I’m committed from a standpoint that you have, as coaches, you’re teachers,” said Saunders. “What you want as a teacher is you want people that are receptive, and so you always look for challenges. I guess the word that’s been used here in D.C. has been pivot. We’re pivoting, just like they’re doing at the White House, and you change course as far as what you’re going to do. It doesn’t change what your expectations are. My expectation was to come here and win a championship, and that doesn’t change. It’s just a matter of we’re doing it through a different course now.”
But how does that affect the career trajectory that he may have had in mind for himself?
“As all coaches, you know you have to adjust in situations, and I think whenever you’ve been there, the conference finals, when you’ve had opportunities, there’s always luck involved to get that far, even to get to an NBA championship. People are talking now, who’s going to win the champinoship? Well, you find out in the last week, in the first round of the playoffs, injuries, all kinds of things can happen. To a different extent, that’s what has happened here over the course of the season.”
The last bit carries the caveat of we still don’t know what the roster will look like after 3 p.m.:
“I think we have a group right now, these guys are committed to playing a certain way,” said Saunders. “I think that there’s no question that our younger players that have been here have a new sense of focus, but they’re much more serious. I think that when you have a team that’s been around for so long, sometimes and not major changes, what happens is everyone gets to thinkiing this is just going to go as is. I think players right now all know that there’s a sense of urgency both from the standpoint of the organization and them. We want to make progress, one way or the other.”
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