FanHouse Flip Saunders

Ready or not, here Flip comes.

After much discussion, rumor mongering and ballyhoo, Yahoo! Sports reports that the Washington Wizards will make former Pistons and Timberwolves coach Flip Saunders their new head coach, reportedly agreeing to a four-year, $18 million deal.

That's not Yankees money or corporate bailout money, but for the Wizards, that's a pretty hefty chunk of change.

Flip Saunders has seemed like the sensible choice to step in for the Wizards for a while now, so it's no surprise that ESPN's Ric Bucher and CBS Sports' Ken Berger both report this weekend that Washington will meet with Saunders by the end of the week.

A creative offensive-minded coach who isn't too proud to use schemes to cover defensive inefficiencies, Saunders seems like the appropriate quality for a team trying to play its way back to the postseason. For Saunders it makes great sense, too. Of the few teams expected to hire a new coach, Washington arguably has the least treacherous road toward improvement. Simply making the playoffs would earn Saunders Coach of the Year consideration; in other situations, the cupboard is either less stocked or the expectations will be higher.

The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Tom Ziller.

An annual tradition regular as daybreak, as the season ends a pack of coaches are mercilessly hacked to pieces by fans, media and often their own bosses. A parade of potential replacements jumps aboard the carousel. They dance, they preen ... one of them wins. A year or two or (fingers crossed) three later, said doll gets torn apart. The cycle continues.

There was a switch this season, though: the bloodletting happened during the season, as a record eight coaches met the iron maiden between opening night and Valentine's Day. Is there anyone left to execute at season's end?

Well ... yes. Of course there is. After the jump, we tell you whom and guess their replacements.

Over the weekend, the Jazz announced that Jerry Sloan would be back for his 22nd year as head coach in 2009-10, the longest stint for any head coach in any of the professional sports.

On the exact opposite of the longevity spectrum, the Thunder and Timberwolves are mulling the futures of Scott Brooks and Kevin McHale, respectively, two of the newest members of the NBA's head coaching fraternity. Will they remain with Sloan in that elite group?

Joe Dumars took the high road when announcing Flip Saunders' dismissal last week by refusing to dwell on Saunders' failings. One thing he did let slip, though, was how disappointed he was in Amir Johnson's playing time in the playoffs and the regular season.

Michael Curry will be introduced as Saunders' successor later today, and I don't think it's a stretch at all to assume a prerequisite for the job was sharing Dumars' hopes for Johnson to see more time in 2008-09. Why does a 21-year-old reserve merit so much attention? Because he's the most athletic player on Detroit's roster, and despite extremely inconsistent minutes, he's one of the most productive players in the entire league.

Wait, one of the most productive players in the league? Indeed, and that's not an exaggeration. This made it's rounds on the blogosphere a couple of weeks ago, but the blog Count the Basket compared seven different advanced metrics for evaluating player performance independent of playing time, and Johnson rated favorably in almost all of them:

Another eye-popper is seeing Amir Johnson, the 21-year-old Detroit power forward who's been riding the pine in the playoffs, ranked first in the league in Adjusted Plus/Minus. This actually isn't as great an anomaly as might be expected - Johnson rated rather well across the board. His consensus ranking was 15th. He was rated lowest by PER (64th), but he ranked 11th in Win Shares and 20th in Statistical Plus/Minus. Obviously one has to use some caution considering he played under 800 minutes on the season, but the fact that he rated well in several metrics could be a good sign for the future.

Yesterday my colleague Tom Ziller asked the not-so-hypothetical question, "Whatever happened to Doug Collins?" For a few brief seconds it looked like he was a lock to be hired by the Bulls, and yet instead of getting a deal done the team has continued to drag their heels by giving the likes of Dwane Casey and Chuck Person second interviews.

So what gives? Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times explains:

General manager John Paxson was unavailable for comment and remained waiting for the OK from chairman Jerry Reinsdorf to hire Doug Collins. Reinsdorf is said to be upset that the news of Collins' imminent hiring was leaked last week to media, which is why he has revisited the decision.

Really? If that's the case, wow, Reinsdorf seriously needs to get over himself. If he's confident enough to make a multi-year offer, he shouldn't be so worried about the news getting out a few days before he wanted.

But while the Bulls are still talking to candidates, the Daily Herald reports that the Bulls "have not shown much interest" in interviewing recently disposed Pistons Flip Saunders (much to the chagrin of local bloggers). The Star-Tribune muses that Flip might take a year off from coaching to serve as a television analyst. Considering he'll still collect $5.4 million owed from the Pistons, there's no reason for him not to jump back into the business.

Joe Dumars announced the dismissal of Flip Saunders with a statement released this morning, and he hinted at how drastic the rest of his offseason moves may be during a press conference in the afternoon:

"Make no mistake, everybody is in play right now," said Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president of basketball operations. "There are no sacred cows here. You lose that sacred cow status when you lose three straight years."

It's not often you see a GM put his entire team on the block, but Dumars obviously wants to get the word out -- both to his players and other GM's -- that he'll do anything to improve his team. My personal feeling is that Rasheed Wallace will be the only starter who's traded, but if Dumars has a chance to bring back a superstar (Rasheed and Rip Hamilton for Tracy McGrady?), he just may bite.

It's a different situation from last year when Dumars was hesitant to disrupt his core and allegedly passed on deals for Shawn Marion or Amare Stoudemire that would have required giving up two starters. But with guys like Rodney Stuckey, Jason Maxiell and Amir Johnson waiting in the wings, the Pistons are better prepared to plug holes in their starting lineup if the right two-for-one deal materializes.

If the rumors that Steven A. Smith is reporting come to fruition, and they appear to be manifesting themselves through a relevant Googly news search, Michael Curry will soon be named the new head coach of the Detroit Pistons:

Pistons assistant Michael Curry will be named Saunders' successor, a source close to the Pistons told ESPN's Stephen A. Smith. Curry is a former Pistons player and official in the players' union. [...]

'This will not be a long, drawn-out process,' Dumars said about a replacement for Saunders. 'The next coach is going to be handed a good team. You worry more when you don't have the players to compete at the level you need them to.'

If the two biggest concerns of Dumars are that a) Flip Saunders did not have the confidence of his team and b) that the Pistons need to keep things in-house, then Curry is a perfect choice, as his leadership abilities and current role satisfy both requirements. Curry have just one year on the bench, but as a former president of the NBA Players Association as well as NBA Vice President of Player Development, the guy knows how to lead.

Plus, he bridges the gap between the front office to the current roster: he's one of Dumars' teammates for several years and was a starter during Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince's first year in Detroit in 2002-03, which marked the first of Detroit's six straight trips to the Eastern Conference Finals. Would his familiarity with the players allow him to keep them properly motivated? Or would it simply mean the players can stay comfortable? Only time will tell -- assuming he gets the job.

If the word on the street is true, and it certainly appears to be, the Detroit Pistons have changed their minds on retaining Flip Saunders as head coach.

Saunders appeared to have some job security as reports out of Detroit stated that he would not be fired. But more accurate reports surfaced last night that led to speculation that Saunders would be gone. Which was confirmed today.

President of basketball operations Joe Dumars said Tuesday a change is necessary despite Saunders' successes.

In his three seasons, the Pistons were 176-70 in the regular season and 30-21 in the postseason, but they lost in the conference finals each year.

Well, either that or Saunders was as good as gone all along and someone just got their initial facts wrong. Which is entirely possible considering that all of the initial speculation was the work of Chris McCosky.

So not only can you expect a little beatdown across the 'sphere today, but you should probably be looking for some sort of retraction type post from McCosky's byline. Oh, no ... wait. It appears McCosky is already one step ahead, er, behind. Or whatever you would call a journalistic backpeddle.

Hey, I tend to agree with him -- it probably is a bad decision to can Flip, for a number of reasons, mainly that losing certainly is not his fault (although his playoff track record, folks, is just simply not great). But that doesn't make misreporting the "facts" and then trying to act like you weren't reporting them as such any less embarrassing.

Less embarrassing may be the amount of time that Flip will spend on the open market. As Matt M points out, Steve Kerr would be quite wise to have already gone all Kelvin Sampson on the situation.

You know that "Flip Saunders' job is safe" talk from yesterday? Turns out he's not out of the woods just yet. From Krista Jahnke of the Detroit Free Press:

A person with knowledge of the situation said president Joe Dumars has not sat down with Saunders yet to discuss the past season, which ended last week to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals.

Nor has Dumars met with owner Bill Davidson, who will undoubtedly have his say in Saunders' future.

The person said a meeting between Dumars and Davidson will take place "really soon," and after that, questions about Saunders' future should be cleared up. The person stressed that Saunders has not yet been given any assurance he'll be back.

This contradicts Chris McCosky's article in the Detroit News yesterday, although it's somewhat telling that McCosky has backed off his initial prediction today. Obviously no one not named Joe Dumars knows what's going to happen -- and maybe not even him just yet.

No matter what his status may be with the Pistons, there's no doubt that Saunders will coach in the NBA in 2008-09 if he wants to. He's failed to get the Pistons over the hump and back into the Finals, but he's also averaged more than 58 wins each of his three years in Detroit. I imagine there are at least a handful of teams out there who'd seriously consider canning their current coach should Saunders become available.