Blatt, 55, learned to follow his own path at an early age. His parents divorced when he was 8 and living in Framingham, Mass., a suburb west of Boston. His father, a doctor of biochemistry, moved to Europe a few years later, with Blatt’s two older sisters.

Blatt stayed in Massachusetts with his mother, became the senior class president of his high school and went on to Princeton, where he became an English literature major. It was there that he was approached about spending a summer playing basketball in Israel. Why not? he thought. So he went.

Blatt liked the experience enough that he returned after college to play there professionally. He returned to the United States after three years, worked briefly for Xerox and then went back to Israel to keep playing.

While there, he met his wife, with whom he has four children, and he went into coaching when he tore his Achilles’ tendon at age 34. In the two decades since, he has coached professional clubs in Israel, Turkey, Italy, Russia and Greece, in addition to the Russian national team.

This past May, he won the prestigious Euroleague title with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and now, said Danny Federman, the general manager of the club, Blatt is a “rock star” throughout Israel.

In the United States, though, he is essentially unknown outside basketball circles. Blatt said it was perfectly fair to point out that he lacked experience coaching in the N.B.A., and he acknowledged that he had catching up to do. On the other hand, he said, he has dealt with adversity that the great majority of N.B.A. coaches will never encounter.

He has, for instance, coached players in Russia who wanted to boycott because they had not been paid. He coached players who would not play in Belgrade, Serbia, because they were concerned for their safety. He has coached Americans — a number of them — who were in Europe grudgingly, and he has grappled with executives from other countries who did not always agree with his methods.