(JTA) — David Blatt, the Israeli-American coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, lamented his team’s loss in the NBA Finals but said it doesn’t mean the overall season was bad.
“Not every story has a happy ending,” Blatt said at a news conference Tuesday night after the Golden State Warriors won the championship with a victory in Game 6 in Cleveland. “It doesn’t mean it was a bad story. It was not. It was a good story.”
The Warriors took the best-of-7 series, 4 games to 2, to claim their first title in 40 years.
Thousands of Israeli fans of Blatt and the Cavs, led by the four-time Most Valuable Player LeBron James, had woken up in the early hours of the morning to watch the Finals live.
It was Blatt’s first season as Cavaliers’ head coach. Last season he guided Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Euroleague championship.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told Army Radio in an interview on Wednesday morning in Israel shortly after the game ended that he “offers condolences and commiserates” on the defeat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly contacted Blatt last week to wish him good luck in the Finals and told him “all of Israel is behind the Cavaliers.”
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