Blatt meets with New York Knicks over coaching vacancy

David Blatt has met with Phil Jackson and the New York Knicks about their head coaching vacancy.

Despite having no connections to Phil Jackson or the arcane triangle offense, David Blatt has reportedly met with the New York Knicks regarding their vacant head coaching job, per Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.

The former head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers has watched his old team perform generally the same, or even a little worse, since he was relieved of his duties in January, despite setting the pace for the Eastern Conference with a 30-11 record. He was 83-40 in Cleveland in a season and a half, and reached the finals in his maiden season.

Prior to the Blatt news, the job appeared to be Luke Walton’s to turn down. Knicks fans feared that if he did turn it down, the job would go by default to Kurt Rambis, the absolute nightmare scenario for an already long-suffering fanbase.

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Compared to Blatt, who has a record of winning a little more than two out of every three games, Rambis has been a little, uh, less prolific. As a head coach, though he didn’t have LeBron James on his team, he owns a career record of 65-164. If, like me, your math isn’t great, those numbers can be translated into the words “not very good.” He was 9-19 with the Knicks after taking over once Derek Fisher was let go.

It’s unclear if the Blatt news is just a smokescreen, or whether Jackson is trying to placate fans who want to see some semblance of an actual coaching search rather than the former players Jackson had during his time as a coach in the NBA.

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Despite having no knowledge of the triangle offense under Jackson, Blatt does have a connection with the Knicks. He played with general manager Steve Mills while at Princeton way back in the 1970s.