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Flip Saunders Forgotten in ESPY Memorial?

By Paul Bellesen

Oct 31, 2015; Washington, DC, USA; A tribute to late Minnesota Timberwolves and former Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders is shown on the scoreboard prior to the Wizards
Oct 31, 2015; Washington, DC, USA; A tribute to late Minnesota Timberwolves and former Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders is shown on the scoreboard prior to the Wizards /
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With yesterday being the annual ESPN ESPY Awards, there was some uproar from the Minnesota Timberwolves fanbase when Flip Saunders was not shown in their memorial tribute.

Yesterdays ESPY Awards started with some big things. Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, and Lebron James gave a speech calling all athletes to action to stand up for a change in what is going on in the United States and it’s racial divide. Giving a powerful speech was the start of the award show.

Every year ESPN does a memorial for all athletes who have passed away in the last year. The memorial is usually accompanied by a musical performance and they show pictures of the athletes on a large screen in the background. Usually this is a nice somber moment to remember these sports figures.

As yesterdays memorial started, with a performance by Andra Day singing a song called Rear View, most Minnesota Timberwolves fans and Minnesota natives were looking for Flip Saunders.

After seeing the video through, there was no tribute to Flip. This brought Minnesota fans, and NBA fans all over into uproar. This shows what Flip meant to not only Minnesota Timberwolves basketball, but NBA culture in a whole.

This was surprising as Flip had even worked for ESPN for a two year stint in between coaching jobs. When asked about the mess up, an ESPN spokesperson said that Saunders was part of their memorial tribute, but must have not been shown on the national broadcast. They said that Saunders drew some of the loudest cheers of all the athletes featured in the memorial.

There was two small segments in the performance in which the camera focuses on Day, the singer. This could have been where they say Saunders was featured, but this sounds like a bad excuse to me.

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If Saunders was featured on the tribute, but not shown on the national broadcast, where nearly all of their audience would be viewing the award show, this was bad production. To show Kimbo Slice on national television but not Flip Saunders is just a disgrace.

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