David Blatt, who coached the Cleveland Cavaliers to the N.B.A. finals in his lone full season on an N.B.A. bench, has joined the Knicks as a basketball operations consultant.
The Knicks on Wednesday announced the hiring of Blatt, who played at Princeton alongside Steve Mills, their president of basketball operations. It’s a strictly front-office position for Blatt, who also announced his retirement from coaching on Wednesday, four months after he said in a public letter that he had multiple sclerosis.
“I look forward to the next step in my career as I officially retire from coaching and pursue other opportunities in basketball,” Blatt said in a statement.
Blatt, 60, attended the Knicks’ practice on Wednesday. He has longstanding friendships with Mills and Craig Robinson, who is the team’s vice president for player development and the general manager of its G League team.
That Mills was able to add to his basketball operations staff may be interpreted in some corners as a positive sign for the under-fire executive. The Knicks’ team owner, James L. Dolan, is widely believed to be considering the pursuit of a more established lead voice for the front office — such as Toronto’s Masai Ujiri — after a 4-18 start led to the recent firing of Coach David Fizdale.
Blatt, who coached Olympiacos in Greece last season and to start this season, has returned to live in the United States for the new post with the Knicks. He announced he had multiple sclerosis while he was with Olympiacos, but left the team in October in a move the club described as a “consensual termination of cooperation.”
Blatt earned a shot at the N.B.A. in June 2014 when the Cavaliers hired him away from Maccabi Tel Aviv, the perennial Israeli club power, after Maccabi’s run to the EuroLeague championship. In a move unforeseen at the time of Blatt’s hiring, LeBron James decided days later to leave the Miami Heat in free agency and return to his home-state Cavaliers.
This gave Blatt an unexpected opportunity to coach an N.B.A. title contender right away. But with no previous N.B.A. experience, he struggled to earn the support of James and other Cleveland veterans. The Cavaliers lost to the Golden State Warriors in five games in the 2015 N.B.A. finals — a series that Kevin Love missed because of injury and in which Kyrie Irving played only one game for Cleveland. Blatt was fired halfway through the next season with the Cavaliers at 30-11. The Elias Sports Bureau reported at the time that Blatt was the first N.B.A. coach to be fired while his team had the best record in a conference since the league created conferences in the 1970-71 season.
Blatt, with a career record of 83-40, was replaced by the Cleveland assistant Tyronn Lue, who helped the Cavaliers win the first title in franchise history in a finals rematch with 73-win Golden State. It was the first comeback from a 3-1 series deficit in N.B.A. finals history.
Blatt returned to coaching in Europe for the 2016-17 season with Darussafaka in Turkey. He was occasionally mentioned as a candidate for subsequent N.B.A. openings, but never came close to landing another head coaching job in the league.
Source: Basketball - nytimes.com
