He was fired in January despite having taken the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals seven months earlier, and even though his team had the best record in the Eastern Conference at the time. And now he has been passed over for head coaching jobs after interviews with the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and Sacramento Kings, and is expected to suffer the same fate with the Houston Rockets.
So what exactly does David Blatt, the Israeli American who has built one of the most impressive résumés in world basketball, have to do in order to get a new job?
And if he can’t land another head coaching spot in the NBA, how about the Golden State Warriors hiring him as an assistant coach for next season?
Blatt, 57, was close to joining the staff of Golden State coach Steve Kerr last season before taking the job in Cleveland and coaching the Cavs to a conference title and a spot in the NBA Finals, where they lost to the Warriors in six games.
The Warriors have an opening — assistant coach Luke Walton will be heading to the Lakers after beating out Blatt and other candidates for that coveted position — and Blatt would be a good fit for the job.
Like Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob, Blatt is a Jewish kid from Massachusetts. Like Kerr, much of Blatt’s identity was formed in the Middle East.
Blatt was a point guard for nine years for teams in Israel, going on to become a four-time Israeli coach of the year and leading Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Euroleague championship in 2014. The native of Framingham, Massachusetts, served in the Israel Defense Forces and married an Israeli.
Kerr, 50, was born in Lebanon and attended schools in Cairo and Beirut. His father, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was shot and killed by Islamic Jihad in 1984 when Kerr was 18 and a freshman at the University of Arizona.
Blatt was in the United States for his own father’s funeral in June 2014, just after Kerr had gotten the Warriors job. They have the same agent, who set up a meeting at Los Angeles International Airport. Kerr quickly discovered they share basketball philosophies, especially on offensive ball movement and pacing, and they agreed that Blatt would become Kerr’s assistant.
But then the Cavaliers contacted Blatt, and Kerr urged him to consider the head coaching job in Cleveland.
Blatt, who played on the U.S. team that won the basketball gold medal at the 1981 Maccabiah Games, also has coached in Russia, Turkey, Italy and Greece. He got generally good reviews last year for taking the Cavaliers to the Finals despite midseason trades and injuries to two key players.
This season, even though the Cavaliers were zipping along and winning three out of every four games, he was fired on Jan. 22 because of poor team chemistry.
In recent weeks, he has lost out to Walton for the Lakers’ job, was bypassed by the New York Knicks in favor of Jeff Hornacek, was a finalist for the Sacramento Kings’ post taken by Dave Joerger, and is likely to be beaten out for the Houston Rockets’ coaching spot by Mike D’Antoni. Hornacek, Joerger and D’Antoni all have longer NBA coaching résumés than Blatt.
“If you’re a coach, you’re going to get hit in the head once in a while,” Blatt said last weekend at a coaching clinic in Toronto.
Blatt, an intellectual who actually pauses before answering questions in news conferences, probably is not glib enough to get a job on TV like many ex-coaches. A Princeton graduate with a degree in English literature, he ended some practices in Israel by quizzing players on vocabulary, mythology or current events — making the team run extra sprints if no one had the right answer.
His basketball IQ is undeniable, and Blatt could be a valuable strategist for the Warriors next season as they try to maintain the high level of play that translated into a record-setting 73 wins during the 2015-16 regular seasson and another deep run in the NBA playoffs.