Flip Side

Larry Brown is a great coach! He has been a proven winner everywhere he has been and has walked away from the Kansas Jayhawks and Detroit Pistons with championships. He has also taken three NBA teams to the finals.

The problem with Brown is that he has always been a grass is greener on the other side type of guy. It’s like he enjoys building teams up into championship contenders and then walking away and watching them come crumbling down so people will sit around and talk about how much they miss his coaching.

But that’s not what happened in Detroit. After taking the Pistons to back-to-back NBA Finals Brown bolted the motor city for a rebuilding project in the Big Apple. Most organizations would look at this kind of change as a crushing blow but the Pistons just moved on.

Detroit is 16-3 and sits with the best record in the Eastern Conference by six games. They are led by Rip Hamilton’s 21.5 points a game, Ben Wallace’s 11.2 rebounds per game and Chauncey Billips’ 8 assists per game. Oh yeah, and a new coach named Flip.

Flip Saunders arrived in Detroit after a 10-year tenure with the Minnesota Timberwolves. After guiding Missesota to eight consecutive play-off appearances (1997 – 2004) Saunders was booted when it became evident the Wolves streak wouldn’t make it to nine.

They say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and the Detroit has a Crown Jewel in Flip Saunders. The Pistons are impressive on offense, intimidating on defense and seem to be doing something that last year’s team missed out on, having fun. You can thank Saunders for that as he provides the structure for this team to continue its success and the atmosphere from them to enjoy it.

In a year when the Miami Heat were supposed to be the most dominant team in the East Detroit is showing that they are still the team to beat.