David Blatt is one of us. At the moment, he happens to be killing a lot of us, with his Cavaliers up, 3-0, and on the verge of sweeping the pesky Celtics right out of the playoffs in Sunday's matinee.
But he is one of our own, a thoughtful guy from Framingham with a degree in English literature from Princeton, and with enough overseas playing and coaching experience to certify him as a one-man United Nations of hoopdom.
The proud son and graduate of what was Framingham South High also speaks five languages, one of them our own, perfectly peppered on demand with hybrid "r's" and dropped "g's."
"You know, I was thinking, I was going to break down into my best Bah-ston accent," a relaxed Blatt said late Thursday night after the Cavs slapped down the Celtics, 103-95, on Causeway Street, "in coming here to the Gah-den and seein' what's goin' on . . . but I figured I'd just stay with my old regular accent that I acquired over the years with being away."
By whatever dialect of Blatt's choosing, the slick, talented Cavs have accepted the accent of his X's and O's. They are talented and they are also poised and disciplined, which always speaks to coaching, especially on a gifted team that includes LeBron James, the world's most gifted player, and other exceptional talents.
The Cavaliers have yet to blow away the Celtics in any of the three games — with an average winning spread of just under 10 points — but that seems more a function not of a faulty game plan, but one of simply reaching for their best as needed against a weaker opponent.
The few, brief times the Celtics have managed to get ahead . . . ever . . . so . . . slightly, the Cavaliers have awakened to bolt ahead again with a run of 6, 8, or however many points necessary. Prime example: a stake-to-the-Green's-heart 12-0 run to end the first half of Game 3 and lift the Cavs to a 56-48 lead at the break. What had been a 48-44 Boston lead vanished in a blink of under two minutes, with James (game-high 31 points) collecting half of the dozen points.
The halftime break nearly turned into Boston's best chance to get back in the series. During the intermission, Blatt came across a Boston police officer, an old pal from his childhood days at Walsh Middle School in Framingham, a friendship that was the result, Blatt said, of the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s.
Opting not to provide great detail about how the friendship was formed, Blatt, a young teen during the busing crisis, recalled the era as "a very, very significant and difficult time for the city of Boston for that period of history."
(Reporter's aside: Some residents so objected to the Globe's pro-busing editorial stance that large metal sheets were propped up against windows at the paper's Morrissey Boulevard plant, a move intended to block possible gunshots fired the paper's way from the adjacent Southeast Expressway.)
Amid such turmoil, noted Blatt, came that friendship that he rekindled briefly Thursday night at halftime.
"I saw him and hugged and he reminded me of a few other guys who are still around and he said they were still following me," said Blatt. "It was as moving as hell. I didn't even know if I was going to be able to start the second half, to be honest with you."
So briefly distracted by the visit was Blatt that he believed it might have hurt his team to start the third quarter. In just over 2:30, the Celtics trimmed the Cleveland lead to a single point, 59-58, an Evan Turner 10-footer briefly electrifying the Garden crowd at the 2:37 mark.
"So I am going to tell my friend he set me up," half-kidded Blatt, who now is 56 years old.
Boston still feels like home, Blatt said repeatedly, and this series has enabled him to reconnect with a number of people from his previous life. People from Framingham days. People he knew before he went to Princeton as a point guard at the start of the '80s. Some he hasn't seen much of since he headed off on his nomadic hoop wanderings overseas to play professionally for a dozen years in Israel.
In 1993, at the age of 34, Blatt launched his coaching career, one that led him to posts in Israel, Russia, Italy, and Greece. By the time he was hired for his first NBA job with Cleveland last summer, he had earned his spot as one of the most respected and decorated coaches on the other side of the Atlantic. He was named Coach of the Year seven times at his various ports of call.
Now he's here, back in our town, turning the lives of Boston fans into Les Miserables.
"But of course it means a lot to me," said Blatt, recalling that he grew up listening to Johnny Most call Celtics games, kidding that it left him with a cauliflower ear. "This is home to me. It is kind of special."
Blatt recalled the driving route from Boston to his old home in Framingham. He recited the schools he passed in those days, Framingham North and South (since merged), followed by a Sunoco station, a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.
"I've got to find a couple of hours and go back home," he said.
Blatt stands the chance, if the Cavaliers win Sunday, to be only the fourth NBA coach in history to debut in the playoffs with a 4-0 series sweep. Those who did it: Billy Cunningham ('78), Pat Riley ('82), and Lawrence Frank ('04). As of Friday morning, rookie Steve Kerr also had his Golden State Warriors in a 3-0 series lead.
"I think we have played better games, but we're under different circumstances," said Blatt, asked if this is the best his Cavs have played thus far. "These are the playoffs. We are playing a fine opponent. They are making it very difficult for us, challenging us, competing with us.
"And we are doing what we have to to win. It is not coming easy. We are working very hard to be successful in this series. That makes us stronger."
He later added, "We are still in the fight. Boston is not going away."
According to Kevin Love, the towering power forward who banged in 23 more points in Game 3, it took the Cavs upward of half a season to grow into Blatt's methods and game plan. Then came the midseason acquisitions of Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, and Timofey Mozgov, three more transformative pieces.
"We almost had to break it down and find out how we are going to play again," recalled Love. "So it has just been something we have been able to figure out.
"He is a coach that has weathered it very well, a guy that is battle-tested in years past — not in the NBA, not in the NBA playoffs yet — but a lot of that can be said for a number of players on this team. But we are figuring it out on the fly."
As part of his degree program at Princeton, Blatt wrote his senior thesis on Bernard Malamud, author of "The Natural." Here at the end of his rookie season, the kid from Framingham with the résumé full of distant lands and great accomplishments, has proven a natural fit in the NBA.
"I was in the [old] Garden a few times, not that many, to be honest," he said, once more thinking back to his youth. "Long trip from Framingham. I wasn't right around the corner."
Now he's front and center, a local kid made good, killing all who wear Green.
More from Kevin Paul Dupont:
• It's time for Boston to show Kevin Love some love
• Cavaliers' lightning-quick runs are tormenting the Celtics
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at@GlobeKPD.