David Blatt Quits as Russian Hoops Coach
Image by getty images
American-Israel basketball coach David Blatt announced that he would end his tenure at the helm of Russia’s national basketball team.
Blatt said Tuesday that he would not renew his contract with the Russian team, just three months after leading the team to a bronze medal at the 1912 London Olympics. During his seven years as coach he also took the team to a 2007 European Championship.
He said he was stepping down for “personal reasons.”
Blatt also serves as the head coach of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team.
Blatt played for Princeton University from 1977 to 1981 and on the gold medal-winning U.S. team in the 1981 Maccabiah Games. Following the Maccabiah Games, Blatt played for several Israeli teams until he was injured in 1993 and took up coaching.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
