(Editor's note: This is awesome and insightful.)







David Blatt seems to be a popular choice to be the Cavs next coach. Why is that though? From what I can tell, it doesn't seem very many people know a lot about him. Sure, it is well-known that he won the Euroleague championship this year, and some people have heard he is an offensive genius, but what else is actually well-known about him? In this post I hope to be able to give my best analysis of him, using lots of sources and long hours of writing and comparing to try to give my best idea of what could be expected from him as a coach in the NBA (hopefully the Cavs).

So when I first heard that the Cavs were looking at David Blatt as a coaching candidate, I had no idea who that was. So, I went on Wikipedia and read his page. Currently, he is the head coach of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, or Maccabi Electra. He has been their coach since the 2010 season, and as everyone knows, they won the Euroleague championship under his leadership this year.

After reading his Wiki, I was pretty impressed, but not overly convinced. My next course of action was to search his name on Twitter, to see A) If he had one, and B) What sort of info I could find about him. The first thing to come up was this article on Sheridan Hoops. You can read the whole thing, but I will reference some important points. First, this quote caught my eye:

"Maccabi Tel-Aviv emerged as the Cinderella champion, overcoming two significantly stronger teams in CSKA Moscow and Real Madrid, in a year in which few outside the Tel-Aviv locker room predicted even a quarterfinals appearance."

I will be the first to admit I know nothing about the Euroleague. I find it very interesting though; that a team with less talent was able to beat two other teams, consecutively, with more talented players. I won't draw any conclusions from that, because the other coaches could have been bad or the teams could have played down to Maccabi's level, but it seems good for his coaching ability. Next, this:

"This is one of the greatest accomplishments in Blatt's decorated career, winning his first Euroleague championship as a head coach after winning 4 Israeli League Championships, 5 Israeli Cup championships, an Italian League Championship, an Italian Cup Championship, a Eurochallenge Championship, an Adriatic League Championship, Eurobasket Gold and Bronze medals with Team Russia, along with an Olympic Bronze medal."

This guy is a winner. He wins, a lot. Again, I'm not sure how important that is, considering it is NOT the NBA, but he at least knows how to win, and I think that is an important necessity for a head coach. I mean, look at the Karl's and the Hollins' of the world; they have been criticized as coaches because they had good teams and good regular seasons, but couldn't win when it was important. Well, David Blatt wins when it is important. Another thing:

"Blatt has led a group that over 60 games into the season (the Israeli league playoffs are still going on) has a leading scorer averaging 11 points a game, but a whopping 11 players averaging 6 points or more. Throughout Blatt's time with Maccabi, it has been abundantly clear that his players have little interest in their stats or individual glory, and have organizationally embraced valuing the success of the club over individual achievements."

Again, this is important. If he can get NBA player's egos in check and have them fight for team glory instead of individual glory... Let's just say the Cavs would be in a great position for many years to come. Lastly, this:

"Blatt has consistently shown an ability to build a strong connection with his players, who have come from a wide variety of destinations and backgrounds. His penchant for uniting his teams wherever he goes will likely translate very well in the NBA."

We need a coach that can make a strong connection with his players. Look at how Golden State and Marc Jackson were. That locker room was united, and loved him to death. Because of that, they were able to be successful. Well, this is Marc Jackson but without the behind-the-scenes issues plus some.

So, after that article, I wanted to know more. I found this article, and at this point, I was salivating. A coach that is good at calling plays out of a timeout? A player's coach? A coach that adapts his system to his players' strengths? Where do I sign up? I still wanted to know more. I wanted to know, could his coaching translate? Because I had no clue. The Euroleague and the NBA are two completely different beasts. So, I decided to get into the numbers.

My gut first told me to look at pace and see what pace his teams have played at, and try to compare it to the NBA. Well, after looking into that, I decided there was not really a way I could do that without overstepping and making too many assumptions. It wasn't something I had the ability to do. Especially considering the last major coach to come over from Europe was Mike D'Antoni. I tried to find his (Mike's) pace stats from 2002 when he was a coach of Benetton Treviso, but I was unsuccessful. If anyone finds them, then awesome, I would be willing to discuss what that would mean for David in the NBA. But, as of right now, the only thing I know about his pace is that he likes to push the tempo. (I found that out watching this at about the 8:40 mark)

After my pace idea flopped, I decided to look at two things: where Maccabi scored and assisted baskets. I figured that if I know where they get their shots from (inside, midrange, and 3) and whether they played good team basketball offensively (lots of assists, high assist percentage), then I could be satisfied about his offensive coaching abilities. (As a note, I didn't use Maccabi's offensive rating, because I don't think it is comparable to the NBA.)

So, I made a detailed spreadsheet about where Maccabi scored their baskets during only their Euroleague games (I did not include the Israeli league they are also in). I also found a stat here about the shots taken at the rim vs. all other twos. I was very excited about that, so I used it. There is a big issue, though, that I will address. But, here is the spreadsheet:

2013-2014

































Opponent (Euroleague) Home/Away 2pt makes 2pt shots 2 pt % 3pt makes 3pt shots 3 pt % total makes total shots % W/L At Rim makes At Rim Shots At Rim % Away from rim makes Away from Rim Shots Away from Rim % Laboral Kuxta A 24 38 0.632 6 22 0.273 30 60 0.500 L 19 26 0.731 6 13 0.462 KK Crvena Zvezda H 21 38 0.553 15 28 0.536 36 66 0.545 W 7 7 1.000 14 31 0.452 Lokomotiv Kuban A 24 47 0.511 5 17 0.294 29 64 0.453 W 17 32 0.531 7 15 0.467 Lietuvos Rytas A 19 34 0.559 8 18 0.444 27 52 0.519 W 12 22 0.545 7 12 0.583 Panathinaikos H 18 36 0.500 7 19 0.368 25 55 0.455 W 11 11 1.000 7 25 0.280 Laboral Kutxa H 22 37 0.595 4 19 0.211 26 56 0.464 L 7 9 0.778 15 28 0.536 KK Crvena Zvezda A 23 33 0.697 7 18 0.389 30 51 0.588 W 19 24 0.792 4 9 0.444 Lokomotiv Kuban H 18 36 0.500 11 26 0.423 29 62 0.468 W 5 5 1.000 13 31 0.419 Lietuvos Rytas H 28 50 0.560 2 15 0.133 30 65 0.462 W 5 6 0.833 23 44 0.523 Panathinaikos A 15 29 0.517 10 27 0.370 25 56 0.446 W 11 14 0.786 4 15 0.267 Galatasaray A 25 42 0.595 10 20 0.500 35 62 0.565 W 16 23 0.696 9 19 0.474 Lokomotiv Kuban H 26 40 0.650 9 27 0.333 35 67 0.522 W 2 3 0.667 23 37 0.622 Zalgiris A 21 42 0.500 11 25 0.440 32 67 0.478 W 14 27 0.519 7 15 0.467 KK Partizan H 28 46 0.609 6 19 0.316 34 65 0.523 W 13 16 0.813 15 30 0.500 Real Madrid A 15 29 0.517 9 25 0.360 24 54 0.444 L 5 6 0.833 10 23 0.435 FC Bayern Muenchen H 18 34 0.529 6 20 0.300 24 54 0.444 W 5 6 0.833 13 28 0.464 CSKA Moscow A 14 26 0.538 8 25 0.320 22 51 0.431 L 11 18 0.611 3 8 0.375 Galatasaray H 20 30 0.667 16 28 0.571 36 58 0.621 W 8 8 1.000 12 22 0.545 Lokomotiv Kuban A 20 35 0.571 7 18 0.389 27 53 0.509 L 9 15 0.600 11 20 0.550 Zalgiris H 19 44 0.432 10 24 0.417 29 68 0.426 W 6 8 0.750 13 36 0.361 KK Partizan A 17 34 0.500 8 26 0.308 25 60 0.417 L 14 21 0.667 3 13 0.231 Real Madrid H 22 40 0.550 6 26 0.231 28 66 0.424 L 7 8 0.875 15 32 0.469 FC Bayern Muenchen A 20 34 0.588 13 18 0.722 33 52 0.635 W 13 21 0.619 7 13 0.538 CSKA Moscow H 20 39 0.513 8 13 0.615 28 52 0.538 L 8 12 0.667 12 27 0.444 EA7 Emporio Armani Milano A 26 48 0.542 7 14 0.500 33 62 0.532 W 19 33 0.576 7 15 0.467 EA7 Emporio Armani Milano A 21 34 0.618 5 22 0.227 26 56 0.464 L 16 27 0.593 5 7 0.714 EA7 Emporio Armani Milano H 24 43 0.558 6 18 0.333 30 61 0.492 W 6 10 0.600 18 33 0.545 EA7 Emporio Armani Milano H 22 43 0.512 11 19 0.579 33 62 0.532 W 10 13 0.769 12 30 0.400 CSKA Moscow (final 4)* A 19 42 0.452 9 22 0.409 28 64 0.438 W n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a Real Madrid (championship)* A 23 55 0.418 9 22 0.409 32 77 0.416 W n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 21.1 37.9 0.558 8.3 21.3 0.389 29.3 59.2 0.496 10.5 15.4 0.739 10.5 22.5 0.465 *Not included in avgs

21.9 39.7 0.552 8.4 21.5 0.391 30.2 61.2 0.493 Home avg. 6.6 8.7 0.759 14.6 31.0 0.471



20.3 36.1 0.562 8.1 21.1 0.384 28.4 57.1 0.497 Away avg. 13.9 22.1 0.629 6.4 14.1 0.454

So, I'm sure some of you are really excited by that spreadsheet and I'm sure some of you are really confused. Well, it is sort of confusing. But, what I got from it was important. But before I put the really important data, I just want to point out something that is very important and very frustrating. Maccabi Electra used a different criteria than EVERY OTHER TEAM IN THE LEAGUE to define "attempts at the rim." And I have no clue in what way that is. All I know for sure is that every home game they play, they have obscenely small "at-rim" shot attempts, and when they are away, they have a lot of "at-rim" shot attempts. This is also true for every other team: whenever they would play at Maccabi, they would take a ton less shots at the rim than literally every other game that they played. I figure that Maccabi defines it as literally just dunks and lay-ups while other teams use "within six feet" or something. Either way, it throws off the data. I decided that since every other team in the league does it the same way and Maccabi is the odd one out, that the away data is probably more applicable in this case. But, to be completely fair and open, I have three sets of final data: total, home, and away.

TOTAL Percent of shots at rim 0.260 Percent of shots from 2 0.381 Percent of shots from 3 0.360

HOME Percent of shots at rim 0.142156863 Percent of shots from 2 0.506535948 Percent of shots from 3 0.35130719

AWAY Percentage of shots at rim 0.38704028 Percentage of shots from 2 0.246935201 Percentage of shots from 3 0.369527145

After finding this data, I compared it to the Houston Rockets, because of their penchant for avoiding the midrange area. When I compared it, I used the away percentages. Like I said, I believe those are the most accurate. Anyways, The Rockets shoot 47% of their shots at the rim (I stuck with the "6ft and in" I suggested earlier) , 33% of their shots from three, and 20% of their shots from all other twos (midrange). Maccabi in the 2013-2014 Euroleague season shot 38.7% of their shots at the rim, 37% of their shots from three, and 24.7% of their shots from other twos. So, Maccabi took four percent more of their shots from three than the Houston Rockets, who led the NBA in that category. At first, I thought maybe this could be because, as the stereotype says, the people in the Euroleague are tall, white, and can shoot threes. I checked, and it turns out, that isn't why they took more threes. Maccabi had about eight players that attempted at least a three per game. The Rockets, on the other hand, had 13 when you include Troy Daniels and Robert Covington. So, they had more players that took threes, but had a smaller number of their shots be from three. I think that bodes well, because we all know that the three point shot is worth one more point than the two point shot. Maccabi did shoot eight percent less of their shots inside, and about four more percent from midrange, but overall, that isn't bad.

Next, I looked at assist percentage. Maccabi averaged 17.4 assists, and with an average of 29.3 shots, that means their assist percentage was about 59.4. I wanted to compare that to a few NBA teams assist percentage last year, so here goes:

Hawks: 65.1%

Houston: 60.9%

Portland: 59.3%

Cavs: 56.6%

So, I have given you some articles and data to mull over. I don't want to throw too much of my opinion into this, so all I will say is, the more I researched, the more I liked David Blatt. Here are just a few more things about him.

Here is a video of him talking after the championship game (via TopHeavyHookjaw).

Here is the overtime from the championship game.

Here is the game against CSKA Moscow that they won in the semifinals.



And, last but certainly not least, I found out how Jeremy Pargo felt about him.