By this point, David Blatt’s journey – from the suburbs of Boston to Princeton to Israel, followed by a Magellanesque coaching journey around Europe, a Euroleague title with Maccabi Tel Aviv and finally landing a head coaching job in the NBA with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers – is well documented.
But what Blatt has learned along the way and what he brings to the professional game is more than worth chronicling.
Maccabi Tel Aviv, Blatt’s former team, just completed its own 17-day Vasco da Gama-esque journey through the Americas, ending with Tuesday night’s exhibition game in Brooklyn against the Nets. Former Blatt assistant Guy Goodes, now the team’s coach, and several of his players spoke with SheridanHoops about what makes Blatt so well-equipped to adjust to the NBA, handle the league’s newest superteam and its immediate, all-or-nothing expectations.
“He knows basketball, he was one of the best coaches in Europe,” Goodes said. “So [a challenge is] just to transfer to the NBA rules and the league, and to adjust to the new things around him. As I know coach Blatt and his character, he will adjust and will quickly learn the environment.”
Guard Jeremy Pargo, a former NBA player and a holdover from Blatt’s title team from last season, says it will take Blatt a little time to adjust but it won’t faze him in the slightest.
“It’ll probably take him three weeks to get it, but that’s probably the challenge he looks forward to taking on,” Pargo told SheridanHoops.
Guard Yogev Ohayon, who played for three seasons under Blatt, says that hard work and preparation will make the adjustment easier.
“He works harder than anybody,” Ohayon said. “He comes first to the gym and is there when they come to close the gym. He’s always watching games, thinking about the next step.”
Sylvan Landesberg, a former star at the University of Virginia and current Maccabi contributor, said that Blatt’s competitive nature is what sets him apart and will aid him at the next level.
“He’s a competitor day in and day out, practices and games,” Landesberg said. “So he just brought that competitive spirit. Just being able to deal with situations and always staying headstrong.”
And since Blatt is always competing and thinking about that next step, he knows that there’s a fundamental difference between Europe and the NBA that goes beyond the rules and regulations of the game.
“Everyone knows that the NBA is a players’ league and in Europe everyone knows it’s a coaching league,” Goodes said. So trying to take the talents, personalities and egos of his new Cavaliers players will be one of Blatt’s strongest and most important challenges from the outset.
The four Maccabi Tel Aviv players quoted for the story all agreed that Blatt’s personality will not only translate to the NBA but also allow him to thrive as a coach.
“He’s a very good players’ coach,” said big man Alex Tyus, who moved to Israel after a standout career with Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators. “I think (he) relates with the players and I think that will help the new team gel and mesh together. He does a good job of using each player’s strengths to help the team maximize their potential and win games.”
Pargo agreed with Tyus. “Managing personalities is what he’s great at,” Pargo said. “He understands where guys should be or where guys need to be in order to be successful. So he’s just really smart in terms of communicating and not overdoing it and not underdoing it.”
The players seem to agree that Blatt is a psychologically superior coach who, as Goodes said, knows how to behave, handle pressure and push players to another gear when necessary.
“Every practice he makes you go harder and harder,” Ohayon said. “He psychologically prepares you, talks to you and makes you play harder every day.”
What may have led the Cavaliers to think way outside the box and hire Blatt was his personality, something Pargo marveled about.
“He has a grabbing personality,” Pargo said. “Once you’re in the room with him he completely grabs your attention and he holds it for large amounts of time.”
Not overdoing it or overcompensating, as Pargo said, is hard for a first-year coach like Blatt, who will be under an immense amount of pressure to achieve immediate success. Goodes actually said that Blatt will learn from the Spurs and try to rest LeBron James to preserve him for the most important games.
“Sometimes you need to give games away because of fatigue or because of injuries and you need to look one step ahead,” Goodes said. “The biggest example last year was San Antonio. They rested their stars during the season and they came fresh to the playoffs.”
Tyus said that Blatt is a man who always knows his personnel, which will help him strategically with the players and his new Cavs staff.
“He knows how to get the most out of them and he knows how to control situations,” Landesberg said, which will benefit James, Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and the Cavs. “And that team can get up and down the court, so they’re going to run. They’re going to play a faster-paced game. With us, he gave us a lot of freedom on offense because we had the players to do that and I feel like he’s going to do the same with them.”
Blatt won’t be letting Cleveland run wild offensively, but the players will get that freedom at times to play an exciting, free-flowing offense that players and fans alike will enjoy.
“He knows when to push and he knows when to let them play their own game,” Ohayon said. “I believe he will find his way like they will find their way.”
Finding his way won’t be as easy as the Maccabi players contend. All of them agreed that Blatt’s biggest challenge will be managing expectations, which he also faced in Tel Aviv.
“I think the biggest challenge is being expected, with the team they have, to win the championship,” Tyus said. “Here at Maccabi they try to create a culture of always winning every game, and I think that for him, having that mentality coaching in Europe will help him win championships at the NBA level.”
Every game the Cavs play, especially early on, will be scrutinized, dissected and critiqued on every level, which is something that Blatt is used to on a smaller scale.
So will the expectations ultimately get to Blatt?
“If they do, you won’t notice it,” Pargo said.
We’ll soon see how Blatt will handle the many challenges in front of him, but if the support of his former players and staff is any indication, the Cavaliers may have finally found the coach to guide them to the city’s long-elusive championship.
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for SheridanHoops who loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. You should follow him on Twitter.