After the season opener, Anthony Edwards was impressed.
“If you coming to play Portland, it ain’t no more nights off, it ain’t no more gimme wins against Portland, man,” he said Wednesday, Oct. 22 after his Minnesota Timberwolves narrowly escaped with a win. “I’m not gonna lie, I love their team.”
The following day, however, everything would change for the Trail Blazers.
Coach Chauncey Billups was arrested and indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering for his alleged role in an illegal poker scheme with ties to the mafia. Billups was placed on immediate unpaid leave, and the man who would take over for him, Tiago Splitter, learned the news the way everyone else did.
“I was sleeping and my phone was buzzing, so I just woke up to the whole thing,” Splitter, Portland’s interim coach, told USA TODAY Sports Friday, Nov. 7 in a phone interview. “Of course I didn’t expect anything like that to happen. Slowly just getting the news and getting to the facility, talked to my agent. And then a couple hours later, I’m the head coach. It was a strange situation.”
Once he became the interim coach, Splitter addressed the team and tried to convey transparency. His message was that life is tough, but he reminded them that they had each been through adversity. He encouraged them to think of this as a challenge.
Then, he made himself available to have lunch or coffee with his players on an individual basis so that he could hear any thoughts or concerns. It appears to have worked.
“He definitely has maturity to him and the demeanor to balance us out,” veteran guard Jrue Holiday said recently, according to The Oregonian. “I think the way that he carries himself is very stoic. So coming in here, we definitely have confidence when he talks and everybody listens.”
Splitter, 40, isn’t just keeping the Trail Blazers afloat; they are thriving.
Portland, which finished 12th last season in the West, is 5-3, with wins against the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Denver Nuggets and the reigning NBA champion Thunder — four of the top contenders in the conference.
In many ways, its victory against Oklahoma City Wednesday, Nov. 5, was the most impressive; the Trail Blazers became the first team to hand the Thunder a loss, and they did so after falling into a 22-point hole. It was also Portland’s first win against the Thunder since April 2021.
The Trail Blazers are doing it on defense and with pace. They lead the NBA in turnovers forced (20.8 per game) and goaded the Thunder into committing 15, tying OKC’s season high. They held the Thunder to just 25.9% shooting in the third quarter – the Thunder’s second-lowest output in a period all season long.
Over the offseason, Billups had hired Splitter, who was the head coach of Paris Basketball in the LNB Élite. Splitter had a seven-year career in the NBA as a center and power forward and was an eventual champion with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014. He served as an assistant coach with the Brooklyn Nets and Houston Rockets before taking the Paris Basketball gig.
While there, he helped revolutionize the offense, focusing on pace and speed, and led the team to its first-ever qualification for the EuroLeague playoffs.
Interestingly, the coach Splitter replaced in Paris was Tuomas Iisalo, who went to the Memphis Grizzlies and eventually became their head coach. One of the assistants who had worked alongside Iisalo was Patrick St. Andrews, whom Billups also hired this offseason to be an assistant in Portland.
Together, Splitter has incorporated some of the concepts of pace and speed that he used with Paris Basketball with the off-ball movement that St. Andrews helped install in Memphis to create a free-flowing offense that thrives on fast breaks and paint touches.
“We sat down in the summer before the season even started and (discussed) how are we even going to play as a team,” Splitter said. “It was a coaching staff team effort to make this team play well because we don’t have a pick-and-roll-dominant player.
“So what are we going to do? We’re going to drive, we’re going to cut, we’re going to shoot the ball. We’ve got to play fast. That was the idea behind the whole thing.”
With that, key veterans like Holiday, Deni Avdija and Jerami Grant – who is Portland’s sixth man – have shined.
Avdija is averaging 24.4 points per game (7.5 more than last season), 6.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists. Holiday is chipping in 17.4 points per game, but he anchors the defense alongside 3-and-D stopper Toumani Camara. Grant has wholly bought in on the offense after he expressed frustrations with last season’s scheme.
Above all, Splitter and his assistants have molded Portland’s philosophies around his players.
“When you see your roster and you see your players, slowly you see them in practices and where they like to excel,” Splitter said. “That’s how we put together our offense and our defense.
“You know, it’s not hard, to be honest. It’s just like you put 1+1 = 2. You have Deni, he loves to play with speed and drive; okay, how can we start an offense that way? We need to give them the tools so they can perform the best they can.”
The Trail Blazers are in Miami preparing for a game Saturday, Nov. 8 against a team that runs a similar offense. The Heat rank first in pace (106.38) and the Trail Blazers (105.25) are second. It will be another interesting barometer for Portland, arguably the surprise team thus far this year.
But the season is young, and Portland has to contend with a loaded Western Conference. Splitter, however, stressed that he won’t waver. He wants the Trail Blazers to play true to their identity.
“We just have to stick with our plan and our vision,” he said. “We have confidence in our plan.”