Flip Saunders had a tough challenge to prepare for coaching the Wizards against Minnesota tonight to begin with the wake of his mother’s passing on Friday. Add to that the absences of Nick Young with the flu and Josh Howard with a pulled left hamstring, and it becomes even greater, even against a Timberwolves team that has a worse record.
“I’m talking to a lot of people back home, probably have gotten over 200 emails, texts and a lot of calls, and so you’re still trying to deal with things back home to prepare for tomorrow and Monday,” said Saunders when asked about the difficulty of preparing, also reiterating what he said yesterday.
“You get back with your team,” said Saunders. “You’re with guys that you’re familiar with, and you’ve been through a lot so it’s a way to maybe escape a little bit if you can. This is something she’d want me to do, come back and coach, and then I’ll leave tomorrow to take care of some things.”
To fill out his starting five, Saunders is going with his 22nd different lineup of the season, giving Jordan Crawford his first NBA start and putting Rashard Lewis back on the floor two days after he seemed to indicate that season-ending knee surgery was likely. Apparently, the Wizards have other ideas.
“Rashard’s going to play,” said Saunders on Friday. “He’s fine. He’s got a situation with his leg that it’s not going to get hurt anymore, but he has soreness. Sometimes the soreness in his knee, it puts him in a situation where his leg can’t fire as much as he wants to. He’s such a professional. He wants to play. He wants to perform at a high level. He wants to help the team, and he feels sometimes that he’s not out there helping enough. I said, ‘Let me be the judge of that.’ He’s important to us, just as much as anything his leadership. When we’ve been playing well in that stretch playing against good teams, he was playing well because he does a lot of things that go unnoticed. We’ll just have to keep on monitoring it, and he’s going to keep on rehabbing it, and we’re going to try to some different things to keep him loose when he sits out and just monitor him more.”
Lewis, Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee will get the first crack at limiting Minnesota forward Kevin Love, who got his 49th double-double in a row with 21 points and 23 rebounds in the Timberwolves’ loss at Philadelphia last night – it was also his 10th game this season and second in a row with at least 20 points and 20 rebounds.
Love’s streak is the second-longest streak in the league since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976. Moses Malone had a 51-game streak with Houston that ran from the 1978-79 season into the 1979-80 season.
“I was thinking someone could roll into his knee like [Nikola] Pekovic did, maybe knock him out,” said Saunders, in a risky temptation of fate.. “It would be fitting that the only guy who can keep him from getting one of his double-doubles is one of his own players hurting him. Kevin is just playing unbelievable. He’s got great hands, and he’s just got a nose for the ball. I told our guys, just go box him out or try to because he’ll take you right to where the ball is because he just has a nose for the ball like most great rebounders do.”
