The Minnesota Timberwolves spoke to Lionel Hollins in the offseason about their open head coaching position, but the team had uncertainty due to the Kevin Love trade.

Flip Saunders ultimately did not hire Hollins and became the head coach himself. Hollins was later hired as the Brooklyn Nets' coach.

“We talked a lot about it,” Saunders said. “I think Lionel is a great coach. … But that whole thing was because of the Love situation. There was too much of the unknowns. Lionel, he’s a team who took a team to a conference finals, I thought that he was going to go to a veteran type team, and I couldn’t guarantee him that would be this type of team.

“I wanted to hire a coach that knew what we had, and since we didn’t know what we had, we went in a different direction, but he was one of the two or three guys that we talked to and seriously considered.”

Hollins did not seem interested in discussing the situation.

“We did the interview,” he said. “They hired somebody else. That’s where it went.”