By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
David Blatt, currently the coach of Greek EuroLeague powerhouse Olympiacos, was the guest of the basketball show “Pick and Roll” at COSMOTE TV and for the first time, he spoke publicly about the gap in his relationship with LeBron James.
Interviewed by Vasilis Skountis, Blatt was asked if he felt that he didn’t get a fair chance in Cleveland: “They were not unfair, they gave me the job. Looking back, probably the timing was not right in longterm and probably that’s why I am not in the NBA, but it’s not something that I miss. I coached in the NBA finals, I got an Eastern conference title, so…”
Blatt was also asked if he felt that LeBron never accepted him. His answer clarifies a lot about what was happening in Cleveland: “I didn’t felt unaccepted, but we were seeing the game differently. He was an NBA player for his whole life, one of the best ever in the history of the game and I was a first-time NBA coach, who had spent the rest of his career in Europe. That’s a wide river. Unfortunately, when I am thinking about big rivers, I think about the Styx leading to Hades“.
Speaking to a Greek television station, Blatt referred to the Greek mythology in which the Styx is the river that forms the boundary between the underworld and the world of the living, so it’s pretty obvious what he meant.
When he was asked which game in his career he would like to play again, he added: “Game 4 of the NBA finals. We were up 2-1 over the Warriors, despite missing injured Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. That’s a game that I would like to play again“.