The last time I communicated with Flip Saunders was back in August, when the Minnesota Timberwolves announced he had Hodgkin lymphoma, deeming it "a very treatable and curable form of cancer." After the initial shock of the news, I sent Saunders a text message encouraging him to stay strong. A few hours later, Saunders thanked me for reaching out and assured me he was doing everything in his power to beat the illness.

I never thought to check back on him, never doubted that after a few chemo treatments he'd be back on the bench or upstairs calling the shots again, because I trusted he would pull through. Saunders had a way about him that made you believe what he said, no matter how hyperbolic, no matter how transparent the need to have the message accepted. He worked hard to communicate and persuade, which probably explains how he was able to get Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor to hire him based on one letter, and to sustain a long and relatively successful career as a coach and executive in the NBA despite never making it past a brief tryout with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers as a player.

View photos Flip Saunders died at age 60. (AP) More

When Saunders told me he would be fine two months ago, I believed him, because it took me back to a conversation we shared shortly before he started his first season with the Washington Wizards six years ago. Saunders revealed the mantra he relied upon his entire life – the one that helped him start on the varsity team at Cuyahoga Heights High School despite being a 5-foot-2 freshman and emerge as the pint-sized leader of a University of Minnesota basketball team that featured future NBA champions Kevin McHale and Mychal Thompson: "Don't listen to what people say because they don't understand the will that you have."

I read reports and heard from Saunders' former colleagues that his condition was getting worse but I remembered that text, I remembered that quote, and kept waiting for the upward turn that never came. Even after he was hospitalized, even after Taylor announced that Saunders wasn't going to return as coach this season.

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Philip Daniel Saunders died Sunday, only four months after receiving his cancer diagnosis and the impact was felt league-wide, from those who knew him only in passing to those who knew him all too well. Kevin Garnett, who joined Saunders and McHale in saving professional basketball in Minnesota in the late 1990s and early 2000s, shared a touching photograph on his Facebook account in which he sat, arms folded, staring at Saunders' parking space with a message that read, "Forever in my heart …"

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