NEW YORK: Flip Saunders, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ president of basketball operations, head coach and part owner, has died at the age of 60 after battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma the last few months.

The team announced the news Sunday afternoon.

Saunders, who formerly coached the Washington Wizards, stepped aside from his jobs with the T-Wolves last month after suffering a setback that caused his hospitalization for a cancer that, he said in August, was “very treatable and curable.”

“I am taking it step by step and day by day to understand how to best manage this process,” Saunders said when his illness was revealed. “I am attacking this with the same passion I do everything in my life, knowing this is a serious issue. I also know that God has prepared me to fight this battle.”

On Friday the team announced that he would not return for the 2015-16 season.

“I just think his illness, I mean, it’s serious,” Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor said last week (via Star-Tribune.com). “At this point, if he came back I still think he’d have a hard time to recover all his energy and all that because he has been in the hospital for a long time.”

Saunders, who went 654-592 in 17 seasons as coach of the Wizards, Timberwolves and Detroit Pistons, is survived by his wife and four children, including son Ryan, who is a T-Wolves assistant.

News of his death stunned the NBA. “The sting of losing another loved one to cancer doesn’t get any easier,” John Wall of the Wizards wrote on Instagram. “My thoughts & prayers are with the Saunders &Twolves family. Coach Saunders guided me into this league, he believed in me and taught me what it takes to be a good player and a better man. RIP Coach“