Blatt '81 hoops around the world

While Princeton might not have an alumnus playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, the Tigers do have a successful globetrotting coach to call their own. David Blatt '81 has been from Princeton to Israel to Italy to Russia to Turkey — and won just about everywhere.

Blatt won Ivy League titles in his junior and senior seasons, and as a senior he was awarded the B.F. Bunn trophy as the Princeton player "who in play, sportsmanship and influence has contributed most to the sport." He played point guard and captained a team that only lost one game in league play and defeated Penn in a one-game playoff to qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

After Princeton, Blatt, an Israeli-American, played professional basketball in Israel until 1993. He then served as assistant coach and later head coach for Hapoel Galil Elyon and perennial power Maccabi Tel Aviv. He won Coach of the Year honors twice in Israel, while also winning the 2004 EuroLeague with Maccabi Tel Aviv and serving as an assistant to the Israeli national team.

In 2004 he took the helm for Russian side Dynamo St. Petersburg, where he won the EuroCup in his first year. For the 2005-06 season, he led Italian side Pallacanestro Treviso to the Italian championship, while also signing as head coach for the Russian national team. Beginning this season, he is coach for Istanbul's Efes Pilsen, historically one of Turkey's best teams.

It is as Russian national team coach that Blatt has had his greatest success. In September 2007, Russia won EuroBasket 2007, the European national teams' championship. En route to the title, his Russian team defeated 2006 FIBA World Championship runner-up Greece, basketball power Lithuania and, in the EuroBasket finals, Spain, who was only a year removed from a FIBA World Championship.

Russia's victory guarantees it a spot in the 2008 Summer Olympics, to be held in Beijing. Blatt has committed to coach through that tournament, which will feature basketball powers from Europe and the Americas. Blatt relishes the new challenge of playing against world powers like Argentina, Brazil and the United States, but he readily admits that the overall quality of EuroBasket is actually deeper.

"If you look top-to-bottom at the European championships, it's probably stronger," Blatt said. "If you only look top-to-middle, [the Olympics have] probably the strongest teams in the world, but the European Championships are incredibly difficult."

Since Blatt left Princeton, as a player and coach he has witnessed an incredible evolution of the European game in the last 25 years as both a player and a coach. The talent pool has dramatically improved since 1980, when the top American college teams could compete against professional European teams.

"[The change] has been enormous, just since I've been over here," Blatt said. "Darwin would have a field day with the game's evolution."

According to Blatt, the diversity of styles in the European game is just as great as in the American game, and from a basketball purist's point of view, its team-oriented nature is an aesthetically more entertaining game than the individual, isolation offenses of the NBA.

Blatt's new team, Efes Pilsen, is another new challenge that he's greeted enthusiastically. takes on. European basketball teams play two league schedules — one domestic and another against the best teams from across Europe, called the EuroLeague.

Efes Pilsen has several American players, including former NBA center Loren Woods and guard Drew Nicholas, who won an NCAA title with Maryland.

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Unlike many Princeton guards turned coaches — John Thompson III '88, Joe Scott '87 and Sydney Johnson '97 — Blatt's teams do not run the Princeton Offense.

"We use elements of the Princeton Offense," Blatt said. "A lot of backdoor cuts, motion off the ball, ball movement, but not specifically the Princeton Offense."

Just because Blatt does not run the offense created by his former coach Pete Carril, he did learn some valuable lessons from the Hall-of-Famer that he carries with him today.

"I learned a great deal from my college career at Princeton," Blatt said. "[Coach Carril] is one of the greatest basketball minds in history. I learned from him many good lessons, and I learned a few bad ones, too. I think he'd appreciate me saying that, actually."

Even though his post-college experience has differed greatly from that of his classmates, he recognizes the value of the Princeton education and offers some words of advice for current students.

"The Princeton experience is one that, even at the time you're going through it, you never see just how much it helps you prepare for what's ahead of you," Blatt said. "Now that I'm 25 years or more after it, and doing something totally unrelated to what my academic experience was about, my experience gave me an enormous background for being successful in what it is that I do."

"For all those good students, drink it up. Get at much as you can. Because it will do nothing but serve you."