Tiago Splitter has been watching the Bulls from afar.<\/p>\n
Not just Wednesday morning before his introductory news conference at the Advocate Center, not just earlier this season when he was a thousand miles away trying to right the ship in Portland, and not just years ago when he was a championship player in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually a Bulls fan myself,\u201d Splitter admitted. \u201cGrowing up in Brazil, I watched many games late at night, hidden from my parents at 1 am, watching MJ [Michael -Jordan] games and rooting for the Bulls. So super excited to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A feeling that was very mutual.<\/p>\n
Executive vice president of basketball -operations Bryson Graham introduced Splitter as the organization\u2019s 25th coach and did so by first explaining how the monthlong process ended with the former Trail Blazers interim coach. A process that began with a wide net, involved numerous zoom calls, whittled down to a final four of Minnesota assistant Micah Nori, Atlanta\u2019s Ryan Schmidt, and in-house candidate Wes Unseld Jr., and then led to the final decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouldn\u2019t be more excited,\u201d Graham said. \u201cHe\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for. Why Tiago? There are so many things we can go into but the things that stood out to me are he\u2019s smart, he\u2019s curious as a coach in a game that\u2019s always changing, he wants to get better. He\u2019s got the right level of competitiveness, he\u2019s a good communicator, he connects well with players, he\u2019s been in that locker room and won at a really high level, and he\u2019s got a vision, and that is so important when you are embarking on something like this because we are at the ground floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are going through a lot of hard times as a coach, whatever, a player, a front office staff, you\u2019ve got to be in the foxhole with someone you trust, and there\u2019s no one more that I want to be in that foxhole with than [Splitter].\u201d<\/p>\n
Especially with Splitter\u2019s most recent \u201cfoxhole\u201d experience.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old began his NBA coaching career in 2019, joining the Nets staff. But it was this last season that put him on the map, as he was vaulted from assistant to becoming the Trail Blazers\u2019 coach, inheriting a complete mess in the wake of former head man Chauncey Billups\u2019 arrest in connection with an illegal gambling investigation.<\/p>\n
In the wake of that news it felt like the Trail Blazers were about to sink into the NBA\u2019s lottery basement, but Splitter had other ideas. Not only did he refocus the group to a 42-40 record and the play-in tournament, but he also beat the Suns in that first game to capture the No. 7 seed and make the postseason.<\/p>\n
Along the way he helped Deni Avdija -become a first-time All-Star and former No. 3 pick Scoot Henderson somewhat resurrected his young career, turning the Blazers into a grind-it-out, hard-hat group.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t go unnoticed and not just by Graham. Several teams were interested in Splitter, including the Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n
Their ownership group blinked while Graham and the Bulls didn\u2019t. As Splitter said several times during his presser, \u201cnow it\u2019s time to get to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a lot of work, it\u2019s going to take some time,\u201d Splitter said. \u201cI know what it takes and I know the responsibility I have and the expectations that come with being the head coach of the Chicago Bulls. I\u2019m ready and I can\u2019t wait to start and work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a vision, I have a way I want to play, but you also have to explore what they do best. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do here. I can guarantee you one thing: We\u2019re going to compete every night and we\u2019re going to have high standards with everything we do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiago Splitter has been watching the Bulls from afar. Not just Wednesday morning before his introductory news conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-744382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}