By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
David Blatt gave his first big interview in Israel, after his return to Europe, as a head coach of Darussafaka Dogus, the Turkish rising power in basketball.
In sheer honesty, Blatt admitted that it’s difficult for him to watch his previous team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, in the NBA finals. “Let me tell you the truth”, he said to newspaper “Yedioth Ahronot”. “It was hard for me to watch the last games. I can’t watch the NBA finals. So I just don’t watch the games and I settle reading the results on the internet. I would still watch the playoffs, but no more than that”.
When he was asked about the reasons that the Cavs fired him, Blatt replied “I can’t think of any reason in the world. Maybe for them, I wasn’t the person to lead. It hurt me very bad. It surprised me, I didn’t feel well, but you move on. There are disappointment in life, the question is what do you do when you take a blow. I could have coached in the NBA next season. It’s more about timing . Sometimes great coaches have to sit outside”.
Blatt also explained that he turned down options to become an assistant coach in the NBA. “I had options like that, more than one, but I didn’t want to. For me , being on the top level in Europe is not a downgrade, in my thinking. I don’t feel it like that”.
The relationship between him and Lebron James was, also brought to the table. “You have to learn to work with people like him, not manage him”, Blatt said. “This takes time. There are a lot of things I would have done differently, with him included. In the reality of the NBA and this team, there is no doubt that Lebron is the center. He is the cornerstone of the club, there is no doubt that Lebron was more important to the system than me”.
And what were the reasons that drove him to choose Darussafaka Dogus as the next station of his career? “In the past, I made decisions that mostly had to do about money. It didn’t do me good”, he revealed. “One of the reasons that made me work in Turkey is the fact that as an international Israeli, my calling is to be a bridge that improves relationships between countries. Until few years agom there was an amazing relationship between Turkey and Israel. I hope I can bring that again”.