All things considered, David Blatt’s first year as an NBA head coach was a good one. It didn’t seem like it would be early on, though. The Cavaliers struggled at the start of the season and, for a while, the temperature of the seat under Blatt rose and there were rumblings he may be fired. Next thing you know, Cleveland was the second seed in the Eastern Conference and, without Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving for most of the last two rounds of the postseason, finished two wins shy of a championship.
Blatt was hired with a wealth of experience coaching overseas. He won championships in Israel, led Maccabi Tel Aviv to a Euroleague title in 2014, and took home numerous of Coach of the Year awards. That was Europe, though. Here, Blatt was trying to duplicate his success in the top basketball league in the world, with the best players and coaches.
At times, Blatt came off as arrogant during his first NBA season. He gave off the impression coaching basketball is coaching basketball, regardless of where it is. The NBA is a different animal, but Blatt didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that.
With time to reflect on a season gone by, Blatt recently spoke about his first go-around and admitted the difference between coaching in Europe and the NBA was more different than he initially thought.
“When I came to the NBA I was under the impression that this was going to be a breeze,” Blatt said, according to the Associated Press. “I’ve been coaching for 23 years at the highest level in Europe. I coached in the national-team environment, coached professional teams, coached Euroleague teams and I thought I thought I knew basketball and I thought I knew how to coach. Which, in my mind, I did.”
“But I realized that when I came over here it was a very, very different game with a whole new set of problems and a whole slew of things to deal with inside and outside of the game.”
With a year under his belt, and one of the NBA’s best rosters at his disposal, next season should be a much smoother one for David Blatt and the Cavaliers. Of course, many will still think of LeBron James as the coach and Blatt as just an adult figure who gets in the way. However, based on the second half of last season and the playoffs, it’s evident Blatt can coach, in both Europe an the NBA.
