GRE/RUS – Russia coach Blatt relishes opportunity with Aris

THESSALONIKI (2010 FIBA World Championship) – David Blatt will be walking the sidelines for Russia’s national team at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey but before then, he’s got a job to do in Greece after being hired as coach of Aris Thessaloniki.

Blatt was arguably the best coach in Europe without a club job and Aris moved quickly for the highly-rated tactician when Fotis Katsikaris announced last week he was stepping down.

Katsikaris, a Greek, then took the helm of Bilbao in Spain.

“After the EuroBasket in Poland and since I did not find a team that could satisfy my ambitions,” Blatt said, “I’d concluded that this year I would not work in a club.

“Moreover, I had never taken over a club in the middle of the season. Therefore, my decision to come to Aris, it means a lot. Aris offers me optimal conditions at a time I was ready to return to the bench.

“It is a club that combines ambition, stability and great tradition in basketball. I am very happy to be here."

Blatt has proved before that he can recruit top talent and win titles.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Princeton where he played for the legendary Pete Carril, much of what Blatt has learned about basketball has come from his time in Israel, Russia, Italy and Turkey where he coached leading clubs and won a lot of trophies.

Though he had a lot of success in Israel at Galil Elyon and Maccabi Tel Aviv, his career truly took off in Russia as the coach of Dynamo St Petersburg, a team he led through an undefeated FIBA Europe League campaign to the title in 2005.

Benetton Treviso, after Ettore Messina decided to leave to coach CSKA Moscow, swooped for Blatt and he immediately led the Italians to a Lega A title. Among his players was Andrea Bargnani, a player who was the number one pick in the 2006 NBA Draft by the Toronto Raptors.

At Benetton, Blatt had a chance to work with maybe the best and certainly one of the most renowned general managers in Europe in Maurizio Gherardini, now the assistant general manager and vice president of the Toronto Raptors and also the managing director of Team Canada.

Perhaps his finest hour came, however, while coach of Russia.

After a disappointing EuroBasket 2005 when Russia exited at the Quarter-Final stage and then failed to reach the 2006 FIBA World Championship, Russia turned to Blatt, a coach who had been so successful in their own country at Dynamo St Petersburg.

He guided the Russians through a successful qualifying campaign for EuroBasket 2007 and in Madrid engineered one of the great upsets in European hoops history, a 60-59 triumph in the Final over the world champions and tournament hosts Spain.

Blatt emphasized on his arrival in Thessaloniki on Friday that he felt he was joining a very good ball club.

“I saw the (Hapoel Jerusalem v Aris Eurocup game) while I was in Tel Aviv,” he said.

“Aris played a great game.”

“I want to clarify one more thing: I think I am coming to a good team. Aris is not a bad team.

“It's really good. It has a lot of talent, it has depth and quality at different positions.

“I know Fotis was doing a good job. Obviously, however, the record for wins-defeats in this year's championship is not what the fans of Aris expect from the team and that is something we can improve.”

Aris already started improving by winning on Sunday in Greece over Kavala for the club’s sixth league victory in 12 games. Assistant coaches Dimitri Prifti and Stephen Deda coached the team to that win.

Although Blatt spoke to the media at length on Friday after arriving in Thessaloniki, he had an official media briefing on Monday and gave more insight into his way of thinking and also demonstrated that he knows what Aris basketball is all about.

“Whenever I played against Aris,” Blatt said, “every time I knew that I would see the group show a fighting spirit and heart. It would do what was necessary. Aris, the god of war, has taught us one thing: That we should be fighting! You cannot win any war if you do not fight. And that was the main feature of the group of Aris.”

FIBA