As unlikely as it might have seemed once upon a time, Sam Cassell returns Monday to where a new life as an NBA assistant coach all started: Target Center.
He never coached there, only played there in that previous life as a gifted but mercurial point guard who you might have thought would become anything but a leader of men. Yet here he is, in his seventh season as an assistant coach with Washington and now the Los Angeles Clippers because of his two seasons spent in Minnesota with the Timberwolves and a coach named Flip Saunders.