• Changing RCF's index page, please click on "Forums" to access the forums.

David Blatt is a former NBA coach

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Status
Not open for further replies.
FWIW, Steve Kerr thought Blatt was such a terrible coach that he was bringing him in to be his lead assistant. That says a lot considering he has Alvin Gentry next to him on the bench, who Kerr hired to coach his Suns back when he was a GM. Personally, my biggest gripe with Blatt is that he doesn't coach wearing a polo and jeans.
 
Regular season coaching means little in this analysis. Popovich earned his reputation in the playoffs as did all of the other elite coaches. Blatt will get the chance to go head to head without the burden of back-to-backs or the need to conserve the minutes of the stars. He will get to show if he can recognize and exploit vulnerabilities in the opposition and close down his own holes as the series moves forward.
 
The thing that made Blatt and people who know Blatt before he came to US including me mad is his coaching of 20 years treated like kindergarten job or something. Yes he didn't have players like Lebron, yes the teams he played wasn't like San Antonio BUT he had a roster he had opponens which they were more talented and more funded higher budget teams. etc AND he WON. He communicated with players, he coached and he WON. That's all that matters. And it must counts something maan.
Now in terms of getting used to NBA is different cuz his practice time is not same, travel is increased, match date's closure etc is a transition, SURE. But the "Rookie" word is misleading. He's really a VETERAN coach who coached everywhere except NBA.
You'll see the tweaks and his "change stuff if it's not working" more in playoffs. You should saw it at Hawks game after the first quarter but you know, the evidence is there for the ones who want to see.
 
I never said that they are equivalent, and I remember saying that those teams can compete with non-playoffs teams and like I said there are level differences. Its just diminishing of you to think that "the worst NBA player is better than the best Euroleague player" that's simply not true,

But I never said this quote, and don't believe it. Why are you attributing this to me?

and saying that european experience means nothing is a uneducated remark as well,

I never said it means 'nothing,' or surely Blatt wouldn't have gotten hired; but it is in no way equivalent to NBA coaching experience. As far as I'm concerned, it's similar NCAA coaching.

there is less talent in europe but the basketball itself is more technichal and less highlights, so to coach in europe in the really high levels in need to know the game throughoutly, because in europe there is no Lebron or Kyrie types of players that can score from practically any situation.

It's a completely different game, and again, the role of the coach is different. But I disagree with the assertion that Euroleague coaches are more knowledgeable than their NBA counterparts. I think that's a crock of shit.

NBA is obviously the highest level of Basketball in the world, it's just that the differences are not as dramatic as you think or want to belive.

Err.. As I said, I completely disagree, the differences are pretty pronounced.
 
I understand that labeling people is something that is deeply rooted in human consciousness.
It makes us comfortable and familiar with our surroundings.
But I've just read 3-4 pages in this thread in which the main subject is around a simple equation if Blatt = Rookie Coach.

But the question is - does it makes a difference?
You can label Blatt as a rookie coach and you can label him the Jewish Pop but what he is - the sum of his deeds.
You should look sincerely on the situation he came into, did any of the players had previous experience with each other? with the organization? how does he perform in this state? his success rate? how the scenario influenced his ability to coach, did he have healthy or near full roster when he lost? how does he cooperate in closing games? how did he cooperate with his main player going chill mode for some time? is he a leader? do players look up to him? does he gain respect? how is the chemistry? his sets? his timeouts? is he perfect? is anyone perfect? isn't even the great Pop has a difficult season? does he makes mistakes? how often? how do they influence the game, the results? Of course he is not criticize-free or mistake-free as anyone else...

What I'm trying to say is that every person in the world and even the Cleveland Cavalier's coach are more complex than a single label.
Does it do you good to sum someone with two or less words - good for you, but it won't change the fact that David Blatt is currently the head coach of the team you root for and we should all wish him all the success in the world!


I agree, it's a silly argument, but I think what's telling is that by some of us saying he is a "rookie" coach we have foreign posters blasting us for saying so. I don't know if this is out of some sense of pride, or what, but it's ridiculous.

Guys, international Euro ball is not the NBA. Period.

Sure he's accomplished, in Europe, no doubt. But not here in the United States, where it matters most. He has to earn the respect of the players, learn their strengths and weaknesses, how to handle them, and he'd surely gain the respect of other coaches who don't respect him at present. Windhorst has said exactly this already, but when we say it here, we get Blatt fans foaming at the mouth.

Relax.

No one is bashing Blatt!
 
US ball better than any other ball obviously. I hope that's not what the pages of you guys' arguing has been about. Blatt is a rookie NBA coach. I don't care if he has 20 years overseas.

That's like if a MLS coach killed the MLS for 20 years and then takes a job coaching FC Barcelona. Yeah he killed it in the US but everyone would say he's a rookie and he would have to earn that respect all over again by winning at the new level.
 
US ball better than any other ball obviously. I hope that's not what the pages of you guys' arguing has been about.

That's exactly what we've been arguing about apparently.

Blatt is a rookie NBA coach. I don't care if he has 20 years overseas.

Same goes for LeBron... International experience might prepare you for a job in the NBA, but it's no substitution for actually coaching an NBA franchise with NBA players.

That's like if a MLS coach killed the MLS for 20 years and then takes a job coaching FC Barcelona. Yeah he killed it in the US but everyone would say he's a rookie and he would have to earn that respect all over again by winning at the new level.

Precisely...

This isn't meant to be offensive to international posters, but when you guys say "don't diminish our basketball," it kind of seems like that's what you're doing to ours by saying the two are equivalent.
 
But I never said this quote, and don't believe it. Why are you attributing this to me?

I'm not attributing this to you, I'm attributing this to the entire discussion. I'm not familiar with users here I dont follow who says what.

I never said it means 'nothing,' or surely Blatt wouldn't have gotten hired; but it is in no way equivalent to NBA coaching experience. As far as I'm concerned, it's similar NCAA coaching.

Again, comparing your college basketball to our highest level of comptetion is diminishing, and again not true. The game is different between here and your league, but not different in a way that you need to re-learn how to coach in order to succeed. there are adjustments to make, the pace is much faster, the players are obviously more talented so you need to focus a lot more in scouting reports and prepare yourself and ofcurse the tough schedule requires you to have a sense of how much to include every player and more stuff that I'm not familiar with, but the basic stays the same, basketball is basketball and you dont win 25 championships in the highest levels there are and come into the US with people calling you a "rookie". Kerr may have a better W\L ratio, but you have no indication of him being a better coach, obviously Doc Rivers and Popovich are coaches that Blatt doesnt come any near(at the moment) but Kerr is literally a rookie coach whose been given a team with shitload of talent that's been running for a few years now. Saying he would have had more success with this Cavs team is totally unbased, maybe he would have, maybe not, but you cannot say he is better than Blatt, that doesnt mean he isnt better than Blatt, that's just mean he hasnt proven it yet.


It's a completely different game, and again, the role of the coach is different. But I disagree with the assertion that Euroleague coaches are more knowledgeable than their NBA counterparts. I think that's a crock of shit.

They are not more knowledgeable, that's not what I said. I simply said that because of the signicantly inferior talent europe has compare to the US, coaches are much more influential, and if you have a successful team with 20M$(12th in the euroleague) beating 2 60M$ budget teams in Real Madrid and CSKA Moscow, than obviously coach did a hell of a job setting up the defense, learning the strenghts and weaknesess of your opponent, which is what Blatt has done his entire career. maybe the regular season it doesnt show because of the tight schedule, but you will see it from him come playoff time. Blatt is a workhorse.

Err.. As I said, I completely disagree, the differences are pretty pronounced.

Well, that's I belive what a lot of people think as well, and I do think that NBA is a higher level of competition, but the Euroleague which is considered second to the NBA, is not that far behind. Maybe it is in the regular season because it's a league that consists of teams that won championships in their countries and not all countries are in equel level, but in the top 8 playoff series there is a very high level of competition. maybe not a level that could defeat the Cavs, GSW or even non playoff teams like Brooklyn or Detroit, but still a very high level.

plus I like the atmosphere here better:cha (28):
 
I agree, it's a silly argument, but I think what's telling is that by some of us saying he is a "rookie" coach we have foreign posters blasting us for saying so. I don't know if this is out of some sense of pride, or what, but it's ridiculous.

Guys, international Euro ball is not the NBA. Period.

Sure he's accomplished, in Europe, no doubt. But not here in the United States, where it matters most. He has to earn the respect of the players, learn their strengths and weaknesses, how to handle them, and he'd surely gain the respect of other coaches who don't respect him at present. Windhorst has said exactly this already, but when we say it here, we get Blatt fans foaming at the mouth.

Relax.

No one is bashing Blatt!
The "Rookie" label is what the guys here have issue with. It's not a matter if it is the true/correct way to describe Blatt in this situation, and we can all agree It's definitely a first one for sure in the NBA - such an experienced and awarded coach coming into a new and different scene for the first time. It's a matter of a word that might sound insulting and provocative when used in a scenario which is not easy to define and conclude and while using a very defining and concluding description on someone the fans in this thread deeply respect might result in "foaming mouths".

For example - I heard about a great surgeon who earned his stripes all over the world, but was always in a military/field environment. Now he started working in a civilian hospital, he needs to learn all the new bureaucracy, how to work with civilians, etc, but at the end of the day he is still a darn good surgeon and no one will ever call him a rookie surgeon even though he has zero experience in this scenario - it will be just disrespectful...
 
The "Rookie" label is what the guys here have issue with. It's not a matter if it is the true/correct way to describe Blatt in this situation, and we can all agree It's definitely a first one for sure in the NBA - such an experienced and awarded coach coming into a new and different scene for the first time. It's a matter of a word that might sound insulting and provocative when used in a scenario which is not easy to define and conclude and while using a very defining and concluding description on someone the fans in this thread deeply respect might result in "foaming mouths".

As usual oracio, thanks for the insight. The label of "rookie" is usually not meant to be insulting. When someone playfully hazes a coach and says "this is your first win" and they respond "guys, no it's not..." It generates friction.

I really don't get this ego thing, and Windhorst wrote about this a few months ago. Just relax and go with the flow...

For example - I heard about a great surgeon who earned his stripes all over the world, but was always in a military/field environment. Now he started working in a civilian hospital, he needs to learn all the new bureaucracy, how to work with civilians, etc, but at the end of the day he is still a darn good surgeon and no one will ever call him a rookie surgeon even though he has zero experience in this scenario - it will be just disrespectful...

That's completely different because he wasn't working on superhumans. The NBA is filled with literal superhuman "superstar" players.

There are no LeBron, Lillard, Rose, Kyrie, Kobe, Shaqs in Euroleague. It's the same sport, but that's about it. Our style of basketball is generally All-Star/ superstar driven...
 
Does coaching even matter in the NBA?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703506904575592363492225220

In a league where coaching turnover is rampant—almost eight changes per season over the past two decades—a study co-written by Southern Utah University economics professor Dave Berri suggests that fewer than a quarter of NBA coaches between 1977 and 2008 had any significant effect on their players' performance.​

Is Blatt a coach that has improved his players compared to their career averages? I gotta give that a big "no" so far. I probably don't have to say anything other than "Kevin Love" on that subject and leave it at that, but Kyrie and Lebron are also having down years too in a lot of statistical categories. Maybe it's because they need more team chemistry. Maybe it's not enough touches to go around. Maybe it's because they are working hard on defense instead of focusing on scoring. But is any player (other than the guys that came in with the January trades) really having a great season compared to past years?

How about getting role players to step up? I think we can look at the Lebron vacation and give that a "no" as well. Shane Battier is fond on this quote from Hubie Brown: "If you do not have good players, you will not win". But even by that lower standard, the Cavs under performed when Lebron was away. Maybe it wasn't coach's fault, but when I'm looking for things that Blatt did well during that time, I don't got a lot.

Another way to judge the coach is by wins and losses. Is the team over or under achieving? I don't have any formal stats on Blatt, but my impression is that he's the cause of about 2 more losses than wins after 65 games, even if we ignore Lebron's holiday. Most of the cases where I'd say he's hurt the team are sticking with a lineup too long until the players burn out, or deploying a wacky ineffective lineup for 2-3 minutes that costs the team a net -10 in a close game. These look like rookie coach mistakes to me.

The offense is tough to judge because you can put me in the camp of people that think Blatt lost control of the Cavs offense back around game 5 and won't get a chance to regain control until the next training camp. It would probably be better if he hadn't lost control of that. If he had control, the team might have been able to recover faster when the Hawks started trapping the ball handlers last week.

The defense is tough to judge because it isn't clear how much is Lue, how much is Blatt, and how much is the result of the January trades. But stuff is going well there these days and Blatt probably deserves a good portion of that credit. There are cases where it looks like he's deployed defensive schemes that throw the other team off balance. They players are buying it. Looks to me like there's some promising stuff there.

Has he done a good job drawing the team together and getting them into an "Us vs. Them" mentality? Has he helped them to focus on the game and ignore the media? Maybe. No locker room problems this season since the Dion trade is good. I'll give Blatt decent marks as long as I pretend he didn't start talking about K-Love's salary that one time. Rookie mistake.

Do I think that Blatt has been better that the rest of the NBA coaches so far this year? He's looked better than Derek Fisher, yes? Who else? Randy Wittman? Sure. But when I look at Blatt's legacy so far, he's taken a team with a lot of talent and under perform expectations. He's still making decisions from time to time that don't look like winning moves.

Do I hate Blatt? No. I think he's settling in and will do a good job. But he's still settling in and still making rookie mistakes. Or maybe the are vet mistakes because those things worked well for him in Europe. I don't know other than that there has been a lot more "settling in" than Blatt's fans want to admit and I have not seen anything from Blatt so far that makes me think he's on a fast path to being an NBA all time great. The playoffs will be very telling. I think there's a pretty good chance that by May, Blatt might have things in order to start looking like at least an above average coach.
 
As usual oracio, thanks for the insight. The label of "rookie" is usually not meant to be insulting. When someone playfully hazes a coach and says "this is your first win" and they respond "guys, no it's not..." It generates friction.

I really don't get this ego thing, and Windhorst wrote about this a few months ago. Just relax and go with the flow...



That's completely different because he wasn't working on superhumans. The NBA is filled with literal superhuman "superstar" players.

There are no LeBron, Lillard, Rose, Kyrie, Kobe, Shaqs in Euroleague. It's the same sport, but that's about it. Our style of basketball is generally All-Star/ superstar driven...
Sadly, the world is driven by egos, even someone who is hypocritically humble is ego driven. So when this is the ground you walk on and work with, I can hardly see a coach who want to be successful, and we can all agree that it's not by mistake that Blatt is the first coach to break this Euro/NBA barrier, he must have big balls and a huge ego to not only survive but to strive.

And regard the surgeon example - I gave it a try ;)
 
Pro sports coaching is such a scam. The difference between the absolute best and worst is just a few games per season. In college, coaching is the ONLY thing that matters. In pro sports, it is such a small factor. If you've got the best team, you can win the championship with a bad coach. It just shows how epically bad a coach Mark Jackson is that he could mess that team up so horribly vs. what a competent coach did. That is the most extreme case you'll find. 95% of the time, switching coaches by itself isn't really going to help you any.
 
If NBA coaching is so vastly superior to international coaching, I wonder why failed NBA coaches don't just go to Europe and win multiple Euroleague championships while making way more money than they would make as assistants here.
...Maybe they don't want to live in Europe? Or maybe they want to stay in hopes of landing another HC job in the NBA
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Video

Episode 3-13: "Backup Bash Brothers"

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Spotify

Episode 3:11: "Clipping Bucks."
Top