OAKLAND, Calif. — It was appropriate that the first substantial meeting between two worldly, soon to be first-year N.B.A. head coaches would take place in an international airport.

Mark Bartelstein — whose company represents the two, Steve Kerr and David Blatt — had suggested to Kerr that he consider Blatt for an assistant’s position on his coaching staff with the Golden State Warriors. That is how Blatt, returning to the United States from Israel for his father’s funeral last June, found himself sitting opposite Kerr in a quiet spot at Los Angeles International Airport, talking about the game and, Blatt said, “about life in general.”

They understood that, as coaching lives go, their experiences and paths were far from generic.

“You know, hit it off just as two people,” Blatt said, acknowledging a fast-developed commonality that went beyond basketball.

Only once before in the history of the N.B.A. has a championship series pitted two first-time head coaches against each other (and it was the very first, in 1947). Rarely have there been matchups of men whose personal histories have so forcefully crashed the borders of conventionalism on their way to the game’s grandest stage.