For Cavs Coach David Blatt, the Truest NBA Tests Likely Won't Come on the Court
CLEVELAND — Jeremy Pargo can't remember the word—merely that it was "gigantic," as the words preferred by Princeton men can be. The word stuck out at the time because of the setting: a basketball court, where the vernacular is customarily curter and coarser. And it still sticks out, roughly four years later, because of the enormous man—one with a 13-letter, four-syllable surname—who stuck out his neck to save his Maccabi Tel Aviv teammates some strenuous court work.
A man named Sofoklis "Baby Shaq" Schortsanitis.
"Schortsanitis is really smart as well," Pargo explained late Saturday night, after his team's post-Yom Kippur practice in preparation for Sunday's exhibition game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. "I don't know about David Blatt smart, but he's really smart. And Coach Blatt said, 'If anyone can tell us what this word means, we're done with practice, we're not practicing today.' So Schortsanitis answered, and it was right, it was correct!"
And so, they got the rest of the day off?
Not exactly.
"Coach Blatt goes, 'Aw s--t, we're practicing; let's go!'" Pargo recalled with a laugh. "He's a great guy."
Apparently so.
It isn't often that players find it funny when a coach reneges on a promise related to practice.
You will hear plenty of gushing about David Blatt's intelligence, and you will hear it even after the Israeli media contingent, tracking Blatt's new and old teams for the past several days, has returned to the other side of the Atlantic. But the reverence for the intellect of the new coach of the Cavaliers was especially evident over the weekend, when Blatt and his Cleveland team opened their preseason schedule against the team he coached last season, Maccabi Tel Aviv.
"Some of your players said that you are the smartest coach they ever played with," one Israeli reporter informed Blatt during Sunday's pregame media session, without clarifying which set of players those were. "So I think the level of expectation is breaking the ceiling."
The Boston-born Blatt may still be breaking the ice with stateside reporters after playing or coaching overseas for nearly three decades, in Turkey, Russia, Italy and Greece as well as Israel. But he has chopped it up with the Israeli press for quite a while now, and his interactions with them offered unique insights into how he communicates. Such as when this particular questioner asked about him being "the smartest coach," and Blatt said he would leave that part of the question alone. Or when he instructed the Israeli reporters, as he did the night before, that "we're speaking English tonight. Remember, guys."
In those instances, he presented an image of a man very much in control, especially when communicating with those with whom he's most comfortable, and that confident approach should be as much an asset as his aforementioned intelligence.
It is important, for sure, to understand how to manage a game, as he demonstrated while winning six Coach of the Year awards and a slew of championships—most recently the Israeli Cup, Israeli League and Euroleague in 2014—even if he has acknowledged that he still must acclimate to 48-minute contests along with 82-game seasons.
It is also important to give your players the best chance to manage each possession, and Blatt does bring a unique perspective to each end of the floor.
His new prized pupil, LeBron James, summarizes the offensive philosophy this way: "Less dribbling. More ball movement. The pass is always faster than the dribble. And my last four years [in Miami], I played under a system where we liked to pass more than dribble as well. Even though, there are going to be times when you are going to dribble the ball as well, because we have guys who can handle the ball. When you can move the defense from side to side with the pass, it will break down at some point...."
And James describes the defensive approach this way: "Early, loud and continuous is what he always talks about. ELC. Defensively, we have to be early. With our communication, we have to be loud, so guys know exactly where we are at on the floor with our protection. And it has to be continuous."
But something else is guaranteed to be early, loud and continuous throughout this season, considering the "extremely strong team on paper"—in Blatt's words—that the first-year NBA coach is taking to the court:
The noise.
How will he manage pressure?
How will he manage personalities?
Those are the two management tasks that matter most for anyone coaching an elite NBA team, much more than managing a particular practice or game. And while there's no way to know for certain until the coach must guide that team through unexpected struggles, admirers of Blatt insist he is unusually equipped to handle them.
"The pressure in Tel Aviv is way more, way crazier than the NBA," said Noam Galai, a photographer who has worked with Maccabi Tel Aviv for a decade. "The pressure here [in the NBA] is a lot about entertainment and doing good, but if you lose a game, it's fine, you have so many games. As long as you do well in the season, you're good. But no one expects you to win 100 percent of the games or win championships every season.
"In Israel, at Maccabi Tel Aviv, if you lose one game, you're a failure. You really have to be great at each game. Doesn't matter if it's the last team in the league or the No. 1. You always have to win."
This may seem like a biased perspective, one borne of not being a United States resident while the Miami Heat were torched for starting 9-8 with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in 2010-11. But the Gonzaga product Pargo, who is on his second tour with Maccabi Tel Aviv after stints with the Grizzlies, Cavaliers, 76ers and CSKA Moscow, doesn't dispute Galai's assessment.
"In the NBA you have 82 games, so if you lose one game, you maybe have a back-to-back or you have a day of rest and you play again, so you can get that last game out of your head quickly," Pargo said. "We have a loss, we have to wait a week to avenge it. That's a little tougher to deal with. In the Euroleague, especially, every game is big, every game counts. Point difference, everything. Every game counts.
"And the one thing about Israel, you're kind of playing for the whole country. You're not playing for a city with a certain fanbase, and half of the city likes a team that's a city over. On Thursday nights, everyone's watching Maccabi."
Now they're watching Guy Goodes, Blatt's former assistant, lead the team.
"When you coach in Europe, most of the time, there's a lot of pressure," Goodes said. "Because in Europe, every game means something. Sometimes in the NBA, there are some games during the season, you can let them go. Lose here, lose there, but still you are on your way. But in Europe, because of the [fewer] amount of games, you cannot drop games. Every game has meaning. That's why the pressure is on all the time, especially at Maccabi."
Goodes said this is exacerbated by the public not taking Maccabi's relatively meager payroll into account while formulating its expectations. "Even if you win, they want you to win badly, and not like one or two points or three points," Goodes said. "That's the kind of pressure you deal with every day. In the NBA, if you win by three points, it's a win. A win is a win."
Here, it won't be the dominance of the wins that matters, but the quantity, with most projecting the Cavaliers to win around 60 games. Blatt acknowledged this weekend that he will be "challenged on a daily basis. I'm sure there's gonna be times when I'll be questioned. That's the nature of the beast. I'm more than ready for it, probably because of all I've been through."
What he's been through was what Goodes goes through now.
"I don't know if you're ever ready for what you face when you're the head coach there," Blatt said of Israel. "You learn how to deal with it, and you either get good with it, or you get consumed by it."
Blatt got good enough with it to get on Cavaliers general manager David Griffin's radar during a 38-day coaching search and ultimately convince Griffin that he could handle this transition. That, of course, was before James returned, Cleveland acquired Kevin Love and Mike Miller and Shawn Marion, among others, signed. That was before the Cavaliers surged from pretenders to serious contenders. And now, with this type of team, Griffin believes that Blatt's history of handling expectations and scrutiny "will be enormous. David's not nervous and he's not going to be afraid of the moment."
The moment isn't all that can scare some coaches in the highest-level basketball league on the planet.
Strong-minded players can too.
The NBA is loaded with those, and Blatt's new team has its fair share.
There's no question that Blatt will need to adapt to them as much as they adapt to him.
"In Europe, it's more of a coaching game," Goodes said. "The coach is very strong, and is the boss and everything goes according to what he says. As everybody knows, the NBA is different. It's a players' league. The stars, they have more say. But I think the good thing is that Coach Blatt can adjust to the situation. He will learn the environment around him, he will learn the forces around. And he will use his personality like he did overseas for many years successfully. But for sure, he will learn how to do it in the right way in the NBA. Because there's a way."
What is that personality?
"Open," Goodes said. "Humble. Joking. Respects people. This is the character basically that brought him to be one of the best coaches in Europe. On one side to be strong with the players and do whatever you need to do. And on the other side, to joke with them and laugh with them and give them a small hug if they need."
He's certainly quick with a quip, as was evident during Cavaliers media day on Sept. 26, when he opened his press conference by quoting Marvin Gaye ("Let's get it on") before referencing his difficulty in securing a parking space because of the heavy media turnout.
Before the Cavaliers' 107-80 victory against Maccabi Tel Aviv on Sunday, he deadpanned, "When I signed with Cleveland, suddenly we acquired seven million new fans for the club. And that's pretty big. It's not every day you can broaden your fanbase by seven million in a day. So I'm happy that was something I was able to bring to the table."
And after the game, Blatt revealed, in Hebrew, what Goodes said to him after they embraced.
"That means 'go to hell,'" he translated, then smiled. "No, he said, 'Good luck to you, too.'"
Acquaintances say he has a sensitive side to go with his serious and silly sides, and that was also evident often during his former team's visit, a visit that included a reception for him, a trip to his house and a tour of the Cavaliers practice facility. In stark contrast to the typical stiff-lipped American coach, Blatt was not shy about sharing with the media his excitement about facing his former team, calling it "a neat moment," and even admitting that he was "legitimately nervous" to compete against friends on the other side.
Afterward, the Maccabi players got a greater sense of his appreciation when they found watches in their lockers, engraved with, "Thank you for the NBA gig assist."
That gesture was in line with something Pargo said the night before, when asked about how Blatt relates to players.
"I tell everyone who asks me anything about him, that [connecting is] what he's amazing at," Pargo said. "Unbelievable. It probably took him a week or two weeks to understand ways to get the best out of me, and it probably took him two weeks to understand how to get the best out of the team.
"There are different ways that a coach has to be smart and cater to each player to get the best out of him, but not give him too much rope to where other players are looking like, 'What the hell is going on?' When it was time to get on us, he got on us. When it was time to let us figure it out, he did that. His mindset for understanding personalities and ways to get the best out of everyone is unbelievable. In the NBA, that's probably the biggest thing to do as a coach, is to understand personalities. And especially a team like [Cleveland], with so many great players.
"You can't deal with Matthew Dellavedova the same way you deal with LeBron. And he's great at understanding that."
How does Blatt characterize his style? He considers it roster and situation specific.
"There were some teams that I had to push more, there were some teams that I recognized the leadership from within and allowed a little bit more flexibility in terms of our approach and in terms of our stress level with the team," he said. "I would say the Maccabi guys got it from me pretty good when I was there."
Sometimes, though, they just got a good laugh.
"There are days that I am one way and there are days that I am another way, and generally that's by design," Blatt said. "I get a chance to coach some really great players, and what I really try to do is know what the hell I'm talking about, so that they'll believe in what we're doing and follow."
There's one person whose allegiance Blatt now needs more than any other, due to that player's stature and the nature of NBA business. If you can't get your star to follow you, it's unlikely anyone else will.
LeBron James has openly acknowledged, again and again—and again in speaking this past Saturday—that Blatt "wasn't part of my process of coming back" to Cleveland.
Why wouldn't the coach be a strong consideration, either way?
"Because I'm coachable," James said. "I'm very coachable, so it never really mattered to me. I don't go into it saying I know it all. Every coach, every guy has his own system, has what he believes in. I'm a very coachable guy. I believe I can help as well. I've got a high basketball IQ, I think. But as far as picking a team or going somewhere because of a coach, it's never been my thing."
James puts just as much of a premium on the assistants as the head coach, and he clearly likes this staff, with close friend Tyronn Lue, former head coach Larry Drew and two-time NBA champion James Posey among the components. While he cut short a series of Blatt questions by Israeli reporters Sunday night by reminding them that they know the coach better than he does at this point, there have been some reassuring signs for Cavaliers fans in terms of their young relationship. During one stoppage Sunday, James laughed and hugged Blatt to his side as they watched Kyrie Irving acting out.
There's something else that will likely endear Blatt to James and other Cavaliers.
"I don't like to overpractice," James said. "My teams never ran in the hills, and we didn't practice twice every day. I think there's a positive side and a very negative side to overpracticing. But when practice starts, we're practicing. That I can tell you. Try to emphasize the quality over the quantity."
Already, Blatt has given James—still fighting a tight back—an evening practice session off, and he has indicated that James will skip a preseason contest or two.
"He's not going to take years off your career," Pargo said of Blatt. "It was never a 'kill us' type thing."
Which is why they didn't decide to kill him after he broke his practice promise.
That word, the one Pargo couldn't recall?
"I think he makes words up," Goodes said of Blatt.
Not this one.
And four years later, Blatt remembered it:
Ubiquitous.
It means "existing or being everywhere at the same time."
That is what NBA coaches must aspire to be, to manage the pressure, manage the personalities.
And David Blatt, at long last, is now an NBA coach.
Ethan Skolnick covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @EthanJSkolnick.
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