- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,257,563
- Reaction score
- 59
You must be registered for see images attach
Tiago Splitter hire for the Bulls was the safe pick: Pros and cons to Billy Donovan's replacement originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Bulls were thorough in their head coaching search, waiting almost two months to fill the vacancy left by Billy Donovan's departure in April. In the end, they landed on former Trail Blazers head coach Tiago Splitter, who compiled a 42-40 record and a playoff appearance last season.
Splitter has the resume to be a competent hire. He was a seven-year veteran and NBA champion with the Spurs, a championship head coach in France, and was a steady hand in a chaotic situation in Portland last year, taking over after Chauncey Billups stepped down just before the start of the season. Coming from the Gregg Popovich tree is always a plus.
Still, there are some things that I like and don't like about the hire. Here's a breakdown of Splitter landing in Chicago.
MORE: Why Bulls hired Tiago Splitter as Billy Donovan replacement
The pros to hiring Tiago Splitter
Splitter was a good enough coach to keep his job last season for the Blazers under strange circumstances. There have been whispers that they were looking to cheap out on their head coach (among many other things), which is why he is now available.
The Splitter hire is less of a risk than the other options that were on the table, consisting of Micah Nori, Ryan Schmidt, and Wes Unseld Jr. We know that he is not going to be a tire fire, which couldn't be said of several of the other options with no prior head coaching experience.
Splitter will be heralded as being strong in player development, and he deserves credit for Deni Avdija's leap in production. Splitter figured out early that his best shot of creating a good team was to allow Avdija to play a point forward role with the ball in his hands.
That was a home run decision. Avdija made his first All-Star team and averaged an impressive 24.2 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 6.7 assists. That was a marked jump from the 16.9, 7.3, and 3.9 that he was at the year prior under Billups.
Splitter also got the Blazers defending at a solid level, where they ranked No. 12 during the regular season. The trend began last season under Billups, but Portland became one of the most dogged pressing teams in the league. That strategy paid off, as opponents routinely struggled to get the ball up the court.
MORE: Ranking Giannis Antetokounmpo trade destinations, including Heat, Celtics, Blazers
The cons to hiring Tiago Splitter
I thought that Splitter did an admirable job last year. And he's a young head coach who should continue to get better. But I didn't think that he was particularly remarkable in his debut.
Splitter's offensive creativity was oftentimes criticized by Blazers fans, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly. They had a bad No. 21 ranking on offense last season. They were an isolation-heavy team that didn't generate a ton of assists.
That lack of creativity showed itself during Splitter's after-timeout plays too, where he was by far the worst in the league last season.
Splitter did have a lot of factors working against him roster-wise. The Blazers did not have strong guard play, and Scoot Henderson was injured for much of the year.
As a credit to him, Portland did have the third-best shot profile in the league based on the location of the shots they took per Cleaning the Glass. The results weren't really there, though. Portland took a lot of 3s but didn't have the shooters to make them.
I also wasn't impressed with Splitter's coaching performance in the playoffs. He did get one win against the Spurs in the first round after Victor Wembanyama suffered a concussion that kept him out the second half. And he made a key adjustment to win that game, going small and closing on a 16-4 run to win by three points.
Aside from that Game 2 performance, Splitter was badly outcoached by Mitch Johnson. His usage of Donovan Clingan, having him fire away 3-pointers rather than trying to bash Wemby and tire him out, didn't make much sense and didn't work at all. He also didn't seem to know how to utilize that small-ball lineup later in the series, using it when Wemby was on the floor.
MORE: Spurs lead way-too-early NBA power rankings for 2026-27
While Splitter has been correctly praised for developing Deni Avdija and getting Clingan to become a competent shooter during the regular season, other players didn't see as much progress. Last season's No. 16 pick, Yang Hansen, barely played and looked bad in his minutes.
I also have some stylistic concerns about Clingan. The Bulls were a good transition team last season, buying into a young run-and-gun philosophy under Donovan. They should continue to pursue that identity, particularly if they draft high-flyer Caleb Wilson with the No. 4 pick as is widely expected.
Splitter's Blazers were not a fast team despite having that same youth. They ranked No. 25 in transition frequency last season as opposed to the Bulls at No. 8.
The quibbles that I have about Splitter don't mean that I'm not a fan of the hire. He seems like a perfectly reasonable pick. And his potential shortcomings as a playoff tactician probably don't matter for a team that doesn't project to be a contender for a while.
It's also important to note that we see a very tiny slice of what a coach actually does. It is completely possible that the issues he had in Portland don't carry over to Chicago.
The Bulls need a coach to get them from point A to point B. Splitter seems well-equipped to do that job, and maybe he can become the B-to-C coach a few years from now.
Continue reading...
