After most of the scrum left Flip Saunders, I was able to get a couple quick questions in with him one-on-one about the roles of his assistant coaches and how his staff charts different plays. A transcript is below the jump.
Bullets Forever: Can you talk a little bit about what time of niches your assistants will fill and what type of roles you think they will fill on your staff?
Flip Saunders: They each have their own niche ... and as I get into it, they'll evolve a little bit more. There's no question that Randy [Wittman] is doing a lot defensively with what we're doing as far as the team. Don [Zierden] does a lot offensively, he knows so much. Sam [Cassell] is going to be a guy that's going to do things, him and Wes [Unseld Jr.], as far as working with players and how they're doing with their lives. So they all have their niche as far as what they're doing, but they'll evolve as we get into it.
Bullets Forever: You said a couple times that you had someone tracking plays. Without giving away too much, of course, what type of things are you looking for with that?
Flip Saunders: What you're looking for is to see the consistency of plays, your efficiency with plays. You're hoping that the frequency of your plays is the same as their efficiency. You hope you're running the best play the most amount of times. We track a lot of plays. Now, not everything we do is based on stats, but it's based on all the tools that can help us.