David Blatt (born c. 1959) is an American-Israeli professional basketball coach and former player. Blatt played point guard at Princeton University from 1977 to 1981. He played professional basketball in Israel for nine of the next twelve years, before an injury ended his playing career, and he began coaching full-time.
He is one of the most successful American coaches in European basketball history. As a coach, Blatt has been the Israeli Super League Coach of the Year four times (1996, 2002, 2011, and 2014), the Russian Super League Coach of the Year (2005), and the EuroLeague Coach of the Year (2014). Blatt took over as Cleveland’s head coach, and led the team to the 2015 NBA Finals in his first season. He guided them to the top of their conference the next year, but was fired mid-season, and subsequently returned to coaching in Europe.
Blatt also coached the Russian national basketball team, with which he won the EuroBasket 2007 in a final game against the reigning world champions and home team of Spain, by a score of 60–59.
In 2014, Blatt led Maccabi Tel Aviv to one of the greatest comebacks against CSKA Moscow in the EuroLeague semifinal game, proceeding to win the championship after beating Real Madrid in overtime.
In his second season with Darüşşafaka, Blatt won the 2018 EuroCup Championship, becoming only the second coach in history (after Dusan Ivkovic) who won Euroleague (with Maccabi in 2014), EuroBasket (with Russia in 2007), EuroCup and Olympic medals (bronze with Russia in 2012).
Take a closer look seeing David Blatt playbook from 2018 season with Darüşşafaka team in season when they become EuroCup champions winning vs Lokomotiv Kuban in the final game.
Pretty interesting ideas and nice sets from simple Horns aliment that David Blatt used with his team in season 2017-18. Entering sets with regular Horns David Blatt finded way show us a way how to make defense busy on the weak side so main P&R action can be played on more efficient way.
Simple Horns and Horns pistol sets are also part of David Blatt playbook.
What you can do after top P&R you can see in David Blatts pin down and brush screen series he was running with his team in season when they won Eurocup.
Zipper series David Blatt used for Spanish P&R game and also he had pretty nice Zipper offense after flex screen. Take a look clicking links below.
Ram screen/ pin down to P&R set was.. also part of Davids playbook. Coach Blatt was using ram screen also in his Spanish P&R set.
Lot of coaches are using guard-guard screen (slip screen) game, coach Blatt is also one of them just in his spacing another guard is clearing side leaving empty corner for P&R game.
Take a look at 2 different ISO spacing coach Blatt team was using in their winning season.
2 simple and effective ways coach David was playing to open his shooters could be seen on links below.
Coach David Blatt was running those sets when he was trying to active his power forward.
Some of the nice offenses that ends up with P&R game from coach Blatt’s playbook.
Two of a ATO sets Darussafaka was running on the beginning of the QTRs or after coach Blatt’s timeouts.
Side P&R game with #4 leading into top P&R game with #5 coach Blatt was running both vs man to man defense but in same time was using it against zone defense
