When the days were darkest, when he had finally grasped the reality of what goodbye really meant, Ryan Saunders would reach into his pocket and pull out his iPhone.
The impenetrable optimism that defined him for so much of his life was gone, chiseled away by day after day spent in his father’s hospital room watching his best friend slip away. In those days right before and right after Flip’s passing, Ryan was lost.
Advertisement
All of his dreams of becoming an NBA head coach like his father? Forgotten. His goals of helping turn the Timberwolves around? Vanished. All he wanted to do in those moments was get away.
Ryan would pull up the browser on his phone and look at listings for cabins in Minnesota’s north woods. He wanted to leave it all behind, turn his back on the league that had nurtured him from the time he was a little boy, remove all of the reminders of how much of their lives had been dedicated to basketball. It was time to get away from it all. He needed it to be quiet.
“I was ready to quit everything. I was ready to coach a high school team and go fish and just be away,” he says. “Just basically live a reclusive life.”
Even four years later, Ryan’s voice quakes as his mind returns to that place. Flip died on Oct. 25, 2015 from complications stemming from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he took a piece of Ryan with him. They were two of a kind, with mannerisms and speech patterns as though Flip was a ventriloquist with young Ryan on his knee.
When he thinks back to the hardest moments, Ryan almost can’t believe how far he has come. On Wednesday, two days before the four-year anniversary of his father’s death, he will lead the Timberwolves into the season opener in Brooklyn against the Nets. He is coaching the team that his father twice guided, the team that employed him as a ballboy for Kevin Garnett, the team that carries wounds from the last three years, scars from back much further than that, and Ryan is now a central figure in the effort to put all of those struggles in the past.
How did he get through it? With a mother who simply wouldn’t entertain any thoughts her son had about quitting. With an old college friend who re-entered his life to help a broken man find his way again. And now with an infant son named Lucas Philip, a willing listener to all of his stories about Grandpa Flip.
Advertisement
In some ways for the Saunders family, it’s amazing how quickly everything has come full circle. Everyone knew Ryan wanted to be a head coach in the NBA one day, just like his father. Hayley Saunders remembers the subject coming up on their first date. Now here he is, the youngest head coach in the league, presiding over a young team in the powerful Western Conference.
“He was so driven,” Hayley said, sitting next to her husband on a white couch in the couple’s Wayzata home. “That’s what drew me towards him was someone that was, like, 30 at the time and just knowing what they wanted to do and what they wanted to accomplish at that age. We always hoped it would happen, but I don’t think either of us ever expected it would be this quick.”
The 42 games as an interim head coach last season helped prepare Ryan for this moment. The 10 years as an NBA assistant helped prepare him for it. The nights an adolescent Ryan would fall asleep on the couch in his father’s office while Flip watched film certainly didn’t hurt, either.
And, unfortunately, those October days in 2015 that pushed him to the absolute brink, serve as a harsh but needed reminder that any adversity the Timberwolves hit in his first full season as a coach won’t be anywhere close to what he has already survived.
Debbie Saunders was in the throes of her own grief in her husband’s final days, and she threw herself into doing whatever she could to help her three daughters — Mindy, Kim and Rachel — and her son, Ryan, get through it.
Flip was such an outgoing, public figure, and so when he passed, the family’s suffering was pushed into the spotlight as well. On one hand, it was comforting for them to see an entire community mourn with them. On the other, the search for privacy was not always successful.
They were all devastated by the loss, but Debbie could really see it in her son.
Advertisement
“We all were but I could especially see that with him being the only son, I think he really did,” she said. “He was broken.”
Some of the family’s most cherished memories centered around trips to their cabin for Fourth of July, Flip’s favorite holiday, and the spirited games of wiffle ball that took place there. Flip would captain the “Old Timers” against Ryan’s “Young Guns,” and for those fleeting moments the family was just a family, removed from the hectic and demanding life of the NBA.
Ryan Saunders was a member of father Flip’s staffs in Washington and Minnesota. Now he takes over the full-time job his dad held for 11 years over two stints. Flip died four years ago this week. (David Sherman / NBAE via Getty Images)For Ryan, a cabin represented solitude, a life removed from the spotlight and far away from the building in which his office was just a few feet away from his father’s.
“Simplicity, just something simple,” Ryan said. “I was having trouble being in the office that he would come into every day to go to lunch. I was actually having visualizations of him coming around the corner. And it was really hard.”
He considered it enough to tell Debbie what was going through his head. She could tell that her son just wanted to separate from everything. The grief was bringing thoughts and feelings that he didn’t know how to handle, and she urged him to not make any rash decisions. She got through to him because she could relate to what Ryan was feeling.
“In a way, I felt like running, too,” she said. “Where do you run when something like that happens? Your instinct is to shut down. Your first instinct. And then you stick with it and things become clearer and little by little, year by year, it gets better.”
He never went further down the road to northern Minnesota than looking at pictures on his phone. Never made an offer, never even went and looked at a place in person.
“In the end, there’s no quit in me. I’m not giving up,” he said. “It was never going to get to that point. But for me, it was part of the grief process to really think about, what do you want in life?”
Advertisement
It was his mother who pulled him back from the edge. And it was Hayley who put him back in the game.
Ryan and Hayley had known each other in college at the University of Minnesota. But they had gone their separate ways after school, with Ryan criscrossing the country as he chased his dream of following in his father’s footsteps.
They reconnected in the summer of 2015 and went out on a group date, one that Hayley made her brother tag along with as a little test for Ryan. But they lost touch again not long after when it became clear that Flip’s condition wasn’t improving, it was deteriorating.
Hayley gave Ryan his space and he immersed himself in spending whatever time he had left with his father.
Flip died just three days before the start of the season, leaving two gaping holes in the organization and gutting a family that, in some ways, revolved around him. Sam Mitchell was elevated to head coach. Milt Newton was elevated to principal decision-maker in the front office. And Ryan went back to his duties as an assistant coach, hoping to find comfort in the structure of the season and the camaraderie of the team.
Like the rest of the Twin Cities, Hayley watched it all play out from arm’s length. She heard about how devastated the family was by the unexpected outcome, read the touching tributes and mourned in her own way for a man she never met.
So she was surprised when she got a text message early in the season from Ryan, inviting her to a game. A week later, they were on their long-delayed second date. For Ryan, it was a monumental step forward to move outside of his own grieving, outside of the basketball-shaped cocoon he had sheltered himself in, and start rebuilding his life.
Ryan Saunders and Hayley first met in college, then reconnected after Flip’s death when Ryan invited her to a game. They were married in 2017, and son Lucas was born this summer. (Courtesy the Saunders family)“You have to build up enough courage to be like, ‘OK, are you going to pick life back up, or are you just going to succumb to what’s happening?'” Ryan said. “It was a big moment for me to be like, ‘Hey, can I leave you tickets for a game to try to reconnect.'”
Advertisement
The person she found was vulnerable, open, far more in tune with his feelings and willing to express them than most of the 30-year-olds she was used to being around. Ryan told her stories about Flip, talked about the process of coming back to the team and his trepidation with reaching out to reconnect with her.
“I was nervous, too, because it was after such a big moment in his life that you go in wanting to be there for someone but also knowing that they’re still pretty broken,” Hayley said. “We wanted to take it slow. And we did, but we just got very deep, very quickly and I think it moved faster than either of us anticipated. We just connected.”
Before long, Hayley was coming to games with Debbie, Mindy and Kim (Rachel works for the team), sitting in the seats just behind the home bench that the family has held for years. Little by little, just as his mother said would happen, the hopelessness that overcame Ryan started to dissipate.
“You start out with all of these dreams, and then you lose dad and so you start to question those dreams,” he said. “And then she came around. Now the dreams were back. So I give her a lot of credit in terms of instilling that again in me.”
For as long as he remembers, basketball had served as Ryan’s respite, his passion, his escape when things were tough. Now he couldn’t rely on the therapeutic sound of a ball swishing through the net for relief. Now the dribble, dribble, dribble was a jackhammer in the back of his head, and Hayley was the one quieting the noise.
“It gave me something other than basketball to look forward to because for the first time in my life basketball wasn’t my outlet,” he said. “Basketball was being there at Mayo Clinic Square or Target Center or being involved with the team. That was my reminder of what I lost. And so that wasn’t my escape. That was what I had to confront to continue on.”
With Hayley helping to get him out of the swamp, an on-court breakthrough happened during a particularly difficult portion of that 2015-16 season.
Advertisement
Ryan struggled for much of that season to work in the practice facility that his father had such a huge part in designing. So much so that when he was on the court teaching and guiding the team during practices that season, he did so with his back turned to the south wall, which was where his father’s office sat empty.
“I couldn’t coach and be looking into his office,” he said.
At the time, the team was struggling through a losing skid and coaches brought the team in together and challenged every one of them to give up something for the team. Ryan stepped into the circle and told the players that he would face the demon for the first time.
“He was broken,” mother Debbie Saunders (pictured) says of Ryan in the time following Flip’s death. For a while at Wolves practices afterward, Ryan couldn’t even bear to face the office his dad used to occupy. (Jim Mone / AP)“People knew I was still crushed. I mean, it was still raw,” he said. “That was supposed to be him coaching at the time. It was hard.
“And so I told the team, ‘Tomorrow, I’m gonna stand where I look at his office.’ And I started doing that. And for me, I needed that nudge, I guess, to do something for somebody else to give something up. And that was where, I think, that was kind of where it started.”
Slowly and gradually, Ryan started to find normalcy again.
“I think he was looking forward to things instead of dreading them, especially throughout this season, too,” Hayley said. “I think with time that helped it get easier for him to go back in office, go back, and kind of face what was all happening.”
Ryan and Hayley were married in 2017, while Ryan was an assistant on then-coach Tom Thibodeau’s staff. Like Flip, Thibodeau also held the title of president of basketball operations, but things fell apart for him when Jimmy Butler requested a trade at the start of last season.
Thibodeau was fired in January, and Ryan was elevated to interim coach for the remainder of the season. Skeptics viewed it as a PR ploy, another move by owner Glen Taylor to go with an existing relationship over the most qualified candidate for the job.
Advertisement
It is not often that Ryan chafes, but this particular subject gets a rise out of him.
“This is professional sports. You’re not going to give the keys to your team over to somebody for a cute story,” he said. “There’s a reason and it’s not because of my dad. There’s a lot of reasons, and I don’t want to talk about myself, but you can talk to other people if you want.”
The ones that matter the most, the players Saunders will lead into Barclays Center on Wednesday night, swear by him. He spent the summer flying across the country, often with Hayley along for the ride, to see his players and establish the rapport he believes will lead to big things down the road. He went to Jordan Bell’s charity game in California, saw Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins workout in Los Angeles, attended Robert Covington’s basketball camp in Illinois. He flew to Toronto to see Josh Okogie while he was playing for the Nigerian national team and had lunch with Jeff Teague in Indianapolis.
“He is Minnesota basketball through and throughout,” Towns said. “His blood’s been here his whole life. His blood before him has been here their whole lives.”
The challenges will be many in his first full season on the job. Every team in the West loaded up for a playoff push, and the Timberwolves will enter the season short on talent when compared to most of their counterparts in the conference. He has installed new systems on offense and defense, has eight new faces in uniform, an entirely new coaching staff and a front office led by Gersson Rosas that is revamping the way the Wolves do business.
The good vibes and the open lines of communication have done wonders to lighten the mood in the building after three tough seasons. But the preseason showed that the personnel and the system have a long way to go before they mesh up, so the early days of this latest version of the Timberwolves will be filled with ups and downs.
“I think sometimes for me, I have to remind him when he is overwhelmed or it’s been a lot to just remind him, you are at such an amazing point in your life and in your career,” Hayley said. “And enjoy that. And as stressful as it can be. Just take a chance to kind of step back and just see everything that you’ve worked so hard towards, and it’s here and just kind of live in the moment as much as you can.”
“In the end, there’s no quit in me. I’m not giving up,” Ryan Saunders says of the grief that had him considering the idea of getting away from basketball. “It was never going to get to that point.” (Matt Slocum / AP)It is a rare day that Ryan will allow himself to think of the cosmic significance of it all. He is too focused on the day-to-day grind to allow his mind to wander. But on the days that Hayley’s message does sneak past the notebooks filled with offensive sets and the zip drives full of video of the Brooklyn Nets, Ryan allows himself to dream again.
Advertisement
Minnesota is home. He was raised at Target Center, where his father’s name hangs in the rafters. He sits in the same office his father occupied and still has the whistle Flip blew at practice. His sister Rachel works just upstairs, his grandmother attended the press conference that announced his hiring, and his mother and family still sit right over his shoulder on game night.
“I guess when I remove myself from that scope of things where I do have to be a leader and coach and prepare training camp and things like that, it is pretty cool,” he said, his voice quivering. “I mean, it is pretty remarkable. In terms of I grew up here, went to college here, my dad coached here twice.
“My family’s still here, and my wife’s from here. what we went through in terms of the loss, and now I’ll be leading this team … I mean, it’s, it’s pretty special.”
He knows every day isn’t going to be easy. He knows that having a DJ at practice or talking to Wiggins about his daughter or joining the business side for a meeting with key sponsors won’t solve every problem that comes along in a long and grueling season. And no matter how many hours he spent as a kid watching his father work his way up the coaching ranks, no matter how many years he spent as an assistant coach in the NBA, there remains no substitute for sliding 36 inches down the bench into the head coach’s chair.
He also knows that there is no losing streak, no injury, no question in a press conference that can bring him to the dark places he went when Flip took his last breath. He is not ashamed of the thoughts that went through his head in those moments. There are no apologies needed for an initial desire to walk away.
It all led him back to this moment.
“There are other people that, I’m sure, want to give up after losing somebody or going through something like that,” Ryan said. “But my point to it is, maybe it’s not ending in a child, a great wife and coaching a professional sports team. But there’s going to be something good on the other side if you stick with it. But you have to understand that the grief process is something that everybody deals with differently. And that was just part of my dealing with it.”
Four years later, October’s arrival still brings a sense of dread. The air starts to cool. Football is on the television. Leaves are falling in his backyard. All reminders of the conditions when he was making the daily walk from the parking lot into the hospital during the last days of his father’s life.
Advertisement
“It’s all the same right now,” Saunders said as he leans against his couch.
It’s enough to make him go into his pocket and pull out his phone again. Only this time it’s not to go looking for places to run and hide from the pain and the loss.
Hayley walked into the family’s four-season porch and found Ryan sitting on the same couch with Lucas in his lap. Ryan had his phone out and he was showing his 3-month-old son a video of an old coaching clinic his father was running.
“Just so he could hear his voice talking to him and letting him know that hey, this is Grandpa Flip. He met you before we met you.”
Ryan and Hayley gave him Philip for a middle name because they didn’t want to put too much pressure on the boy, who has been a gift to the entire family as they work their way through the grief.
“I think part of the healing is that he has a son,” Debbie Saunders said. “And he has a chance to have that kind of a good relationship with his son, the way him and his father had a good relationship.”
Ryan doesn’t play those videos for Lucas every day, but it has happened often enough that it would be reasonable to assume Lucas isn’t the only one who needs to hear Grandpa Flip’s voice every once in a while.
“I talk to Lucas about him a good amount because he would have loved being a grandpa,” Ryan says. “And he would have been great.”
(Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)(Top photo: Jesse Johnson / USA Today)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGtwcm9paHxzfJByZmpoX2d%2FcL7YmqVmq5Gqu6Wx0axkn6SZpXq0rdSnm56qo2K1osXLnrBmrJmir6a%2B1qijr52jYrWmrcNmmqiZk518