Former Israel Super League Coach of the Year moves to NY Knicks
David Blatt will take up a role as basketball operations coach with the New York team.
By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDSMaccabi Electra Tel Aviv coach David Blatt looks on during the match against Real Madrid in their Euroleague Final Four final basketball game in Milan May 18, 2014.(photo credit: REUTERS/GIUSEPPE COTTINI)
Former Israel Super League Coach David Blatt has been hired by the New York Knicks as a basketball operations coach, the team announced Thursday.Blatt comes to the Knicks from the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he was coach for the 2014-15 and half of the 2015-16 season, The Jewish Voice has reported.“I look forward to my next step in my career as I officially retire from coaching and pursue other opportunities in basketball,” Blatt said in a statement released by the Knicks. “I’ve long been intrigued by working in a front office and thank Knicks president Steve Mills and Knicks general manager Scott Perry for the opportunity to be a resource to the basketball operations staff.”Blatt began his career in Basketball by playing point guard at Princeton University between 1979 and 1981, and with the USA national team that won gold medal in the Maccabiah Games in 1981. He then went on to play professionally in Israel for nine of the following twelve years, until injury ended his playing career.Moving into coaching, Blatt was the Israel Super League Coach of the Year four times - 1996, 2002, 2011, and 2014 - the Russian Super League Coach of the Year in 2005, and the Euroleague Coach of the Year in 2014.Blatt is Jewish, growing up in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he attended a Reform Temple and Hebrew School twice a week until his Bar Mitzvah. In 1981 he immigrated to Israel, serving in the IDF on the Schneller military base. According to The Jewish Voice, in Israel he says he became “much more Jewish and much more Zionist.”“David Blatt is a great basketball mind and we look forward to adding him to the organization,” Mills said in a statement.
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