Flip Saunders stepped inside Target Center Tuesday morning with his Pistons for the third time since the Wolves fired him three years ago. His team plays the Wolves for the first time this season — it is April, isn’t it? — and for the first time he returns to the arena he called home for nine-plus seasons with No. 21 in uniform for the home team.

“It’s a little bit different, no question,” he said, referring to the Wolves without Kevin Garnett. “I saw No. 5 (Garnett’s uniform number with the Boston Celtics) enough already. I saw him three times with No. 5 on it. There’s no question Kevin is going to go down as the face of this franchise, the best player who ever played here and probably will ever play here.

“Knowing he’s not here with his enthusiasm (is different). But watching their team, they’ve been very competitive here lately. I give Randy (Wittman) a lot of credit. He’s got the guys playing hard. They’re not playing out the string.”

He was asked about Wolves owner Glen Taylor’s recent comments that suggested Garnett “tanked” last season by not playing the final games.

“I’ve told some people: Glen is not malicious in what he does,” he told reporters. “You guys only have so many lines you write. I don’t think Glen ever thinks that. Maybe it was taken a little bit out of context. He doesn’t mean that. Anybody who knows KG and knows how KG has played, they know the competitor that he is. Maybe the word that should have been used was frustrated. Was he frustrated? I’m sure he was frustrated. More than anything else he wants to win, he wants to be in the playoffs. There could have been frustrations. There was no way Glen ever thought that.”

Looking back on the Wolves’ decision to fire him with a 25-26 record midway through the 2004-2005, one season after the Wolves reached the Western Conference finals, he said, “You make decisions that you hope are good decisions and when you look back sometimes, they are good and sometimes they are not.  Good from my standpoint, things worked out for me. I ended up getting in a great situation, with a great organization and great players. And we’ve had a great run here and hopefully we’re going to win a championship.

“At the time, we won 58 (games the season before) and we were right at .500 and I still believe we could have made the playoffs. Decisions are always made. You live with it.”

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