This week’s conversation with newly hired Portland Trailblazer Assistant Coach, Tiago Splitter, offered a clear lens into how one of the EuroLeague’s most exciting coaches built a system rooted in pace, simplicity, and clarity. This season, Splitter’s Paris team played with unmatched tempo and purpose, and his thoughts on teaching, planning, and decision-making were both pragmatic and nuanced.
Here are three takeaways from our conversation that resonated:
1. Simplicity Drives Speed
Splitter’s team plays with high pace—not just in transition, but within possessions. Their system is built around daily repetition of simple spacing and screening reads (Iverson, drag, ghost, flip). Practice drills are capped at 6 minutes to maintain pace and urgency.
“You don’t need many sets. Rehearse one thing until it becomes automatic. If guys are thinking, they’re not playing fast.”
By reducing cognitive load, players make quicker decisions and maintain rhythm through possessions.
2. Fit the System to the Player
Splitter outlined how Paris adapted the same offensive framework to two very different PGs:
- TJ Shorts (non-shooter): Emphasis on re-screens, jail reads, and bigs creating space with physicality
- Nadir Hifi (deep shooter): Used flips, slips, and pre-screens to manipulate hedges
“They see space differently, so we give them different solutions inside the same structure.”
He builds menu-based learning, allowing players to choose actions based on coverage—but it’s drilled daily with 2-on-0, 3-on-0, and scripted reads.
3. Emotion + Clarity in Decision-Making
As a first-year head coach, Splitter spoke candidly about managing doubt, fatigue, and adjustments over a long season.
“Sometimes it’s not about switching coverages—it’s about giving your guys belief and simplifying the message.”
After a 10-game win streak followed by a skid, he focused on keeping players connected through film, honesty, and communication. He also credited Spurs influence for his commitment to 0.5 basketball and role clarity.
Transcript
Tiago Splitter 00:00
our drills are set to be short and intense. We don’t do more than six minute drills.
No way. There’s no way the guys can maintain the same intensity. We don’t want to create bad habits. That’s why every drill is short. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Sometimes even with mistakes, but the priority is based speed, quick decisions, craziness sometimes. More than correct, correct, slow, slow, because that’s the way you play in the game. And the earlier you start to think fast and do everything fast, the earlier your team is going to play better.
Dan 02:01
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Tiago Splitter. Coach, one of the things that Pat and I love about watching your team play is, of course, the pace and all those things, which we’ll probably get into in the style. But we wanted to talk about how you think about creating advantages and attacking through the middle third of the floor, ball screens, slip screens, goes, all the things that I know are common in the modern game. But your team seems to do such a high level and resets and plays through it so quickly. And so we’d just love to hear your thoughts on attacking through that part of the floor.
Tiago Splitter 02:45
Yeah, I think to be honest, it’s pretty simple, you know, usually the good things are simple. When you rehearse one situation over and over and over again, guys just get used to play and they play better and they read the situations better. I believe that a team doesn’t need many sets to play well.
And if you guys watch our team, you guys can see that we play a lot of drag. Once I go to the second side, drag with the four and drag with the five again. So that situation just in position offense repeats over and over and over again. And this is something that we do every day. We warm up every day doing those drills and we try to instigate different defenses, different reads out of that. Also, we use a lot of average on cuts with a lot of speed. And again, we try to give them all the reads, all types of defenses that can play against us. We kind of like already know with the scouting what they’re going to do on defense. So we try to the week before the game, work on those situations and see all the scenarios and go from there.
Dan 03:56
You mention you warm up every day working on some of these things. What is a typical warm up where you’re working on these things look like?
Tiago Splitter 04:03
Instead of doing a lot of individual work, we like to work with 3 on 0 first or 2 on 0, just the one and the five, the two and the four. Some days we mix it up, you know, the five and the one of the four. So creating those connections with the guys, I think it’s extremely important.
They know each other, you know, a little bit when I play with my point guards is in my career as a player, I always try to have a good relationship with the point guard. I think as a five, it’s extremely important to know your point guard and what he likes and how many dribbles he comes off the pick and roll and then pass. So understand that timing, come with practice and understanding each other. So the 2 on 0, the 3 on 0. And then we like to go to the four on four still warm up and those four on four, we don’t have like the NBA where we don’t have like video guys helping our defense. So we have players doing like a dummy defense. So let’s say we’re going to play against a team that hatches. Okay. Let’s work on our flow in position. First one, they’re probably going to go under second one. They’re going to hash third one. They’re going to hatch. So we kind of play with that dummy defense, try to give them a vision. What’s going to happen in full speed, but still as a warmup still given them like I easily read instead of like going full time, you know, full speed and full aggressive mode thing that helps for the warmup, especially.
Pat 05:34
Looking at those relationships maybe going with the two on oh and when it’s you mentioned you know when the two of the four and they’re working on that within your office kind of that second side like you said maybe it’s a pitch maybe it’s a handoff what do you guys talk about in terms of how you look to create an advantage attack through their interactions.
Tiago Splitter 05:52
So we try to give them ideas, right? Like first at the beginning of the season, we’re going to give them a menu. Today we’re going to work on ghost screens. So, you know, you just act like you’re going to take the speed and you just get out there. Sometimes we work on the swim, which is we just taking our arm and we just slip in a different angle. Some days we say, no, we want the switch. And then we go to the post and we seal. So we try to give them the answers at the beginning of the season. And, you know, after a couple of months, they got used to all the menus that we have and they do it automatically every day.
And they rehearse, they already know what to do when we give them a defense. Oh, they’re going to switch, okay. They know they got to either ghost or swim it or provoke the switch if they want that switch. It’s a little bit at the beginning is more teaching, but throughout the season, the guys start to get it and they come with new things. They are like getting creative inside of the system.
Pat 06:53
Watching you guys play, it seems to be a lot of like the four will pitch to the two rather than a handoff. And I know you guys play with great pace. So before you can get to whether he’s ghosting, he’s swimming, he’s going to stick to get the switch. How do you talk about creating pace and getting to that pitch versus the D H O’s that may be at times easier to defend?
Tiago Splitter 07:14
The most important thing for us is the pace. And then you got to kind of like go at the beginning is everything we do got to go 120% speed. All our drills are set to be short and intense. We don’t do more than six minute drills, no way. There’s no way the guys can maintain the same intensity. So, you know, practice becomes and bad repetitions happens. So we don’t want to create bad habit. That’s why every drill is short. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Sometimes even with mistakes, but the priority is space, speed, quick decisions, craziness sometimes. More than correct, correct, slow, slow. Because that’s the way you play in the game. And the earlier you start to think fast and do everything fast, the earlier your team is going to play better. I don’t believe in the opposite of going half ass. I’m going to jog to the screen. That’s why I don’t like too many systems because guys got to think too much and all the thinking slows your game. So I believe in fast and simple. That’s the big change. And that’s how we play through the season.
Dan 08:23
Sticking on that speed and that pace. Your time in the NBA and now with Paris, I know you said this, I mean, you’re playing probably faster than most NBA teams. For you as a head coach, what is the philosophy behind wanting to play so fast and so much pace? I know the early advantages, but what I respect about your teams, it’s not just that you’re shooting quickly with the pace, it’s everything within your offense is fast.
Tiago Splitter 08:48
Yes, And there’s a difference between the pace that we check, the numbers of possessions, and the speed that you play throughout the 24 seconds is not the same. You can play fast and shoot at the last second, which is different. So people get confused sometimes with how many possessions you play through a game. And that’s not the case. You got to see what’s the average speed of your players during all the movement. And that’s why I said, when I say, I want to say we play faster. And I also say this, it’s super hard to play this way with long stints. And that’s why some people say I’m crazy. Like with the, I sub five guys and same time out or whatever, because the guys are tired, I have to pull them off and five new guys and that’s okay. Our second unit, you do the same three, four, five minutes, first unit come back. But that’s, I think is the key when we talk about pace is between every little movement, the second effort, the third effort, before effort, there is confusion in the defense. If I could say when you have guys that know they’re going to play for four or five minutes, they have in their mind their habits of the drills in four or five minutes, you create those habits, you have less place, you give them the reads on the 2 on 0 on the 3 on 0 on the 4 on 4 on the five on five. So everything is just mechanic and it’s not that hard to do it is a, you know, a change of philosophy or mentality that you’ve got to go through the guys, but once they get it, they understand and they buy it.
Pat 10:24
As we move towards three or offense and we get back to that middle third as you mentioned that last ball screen You know, maybe sometimes it’s a step up but looking at the one thought and the other thing that stood out about your team now you have unique talents and Nadir Hithi and TJ shorts and They have speed and I guess how you think about weaponizing their speed with the ball screen in the middle third and more so looking At again the relationship as the five-man and how you’re talking with him to set screens to weaponize speed
Tiago Splitter 10:51
Two different players, they’re very fast, but Nadir has the three-point shot, which is crazy good. Some people say some crazy shots, but those are his shots. TJ is a little different where he’s a great passer, a great mirage player, and a great finisher around the rim, but still, you know, he’s 5’11”, 5’10”. So, you know, you need your fives to protect him. So a lot of people go under TJ because of the non-three-point type of basketball, but, you know, he’s getting better in that, doesn’t shoot a ton, but… So you got to think about, okay, two different players, guys trying to go under on TJ, so that screen got to be a south-north kind of screen, you know, like hit under. You know, sometimes guys still go under, so you need to re-peak. And then when he got the guy in his back, you know, how we call it, he’s in jail, and then he got the gortats. So all those little interactions is the one that we work on, the 1 and 5 at the beginning, at the warm-up, and every day, and with all the fives. So he becomes part of their day. They do it so many times that if you go under, TJ might shoot.
He might have the mirage. If you re-peak and you go over, okay, then you keep him in jail, you got gortat, TJ is at the rim. So those little things, those interactions, you know, are the ones that we repeat every day. And you need fives that are willing to do that, because, you know, you do a lot of work for your point guard, and you got to leave your ego on the side, because in order to dunk her anymore, asking for the ball, you’re setting screen, screen, screen, and then a gortat screen. So you need guys that are willing to do that. It’s not easy. Not easy. I’m telling you. And I tell TJ, you’ve got to, you know, reward your bigs here and there. You need to give them the ball sometimes, because they are doing a lot of work for you to get to the rim, to get open at you midy. It’s a lot of, a lot of work for the fives. Nadir is a little different, if he, because he got a three-point shot. So the guys are more aggressive with him. Usually they either switch or they hedge. You know, in Europe, it’s a little different than in the NBA. People hedge more. Sometimes they weaken hedge you. So with Nadir, he’s got so much better during the season of passing the ball to the five, you know, and then creating the offense from there. But, you know, you still got the flips. Guy’s going to hedge one side. You flip to the other side, Varejao, however you want to call it, or just playing with speed, or you set up pre-screen on the five. So he comes late for that hedge. So all those little situations and stuff that we work in on the scout, on the warm-ups, and we give them a menu of alternatives. And then we just work over and over every day.
Pat 13:42
Coach if I can follow up on that flip screen, I think it’s something you guys use really well Whether what you’re working on with your team or what you’ve just noticed from the individual talent of your screeners of your guards But I guess what goes into like the successful execution of a flip screen.
Tiago Splitter 13:56
It’s a little bit I tell them got to be smart selling that you’re going to go one side. And then in the last moment flip, we like to call it. So let’s say call it the flip. So we tell the five eight, you’re going to go one fist flip. So he knows that you’re going to flip. Nadir knows that you’re going to flip. So give us an idea and everybody’s ready to the play instead of every time just reading. But you know, you call it one time, second time and the third four time the player is already know, oh no, I’m going to flip this one because he’s been doing, you know, against that type of defense for the whole season. So it’s a little bit of read of us coaches and also the player at the heat of the moment. Just read in the situation and flip on the screen.
Dan 14:42
The other thing your team does so well is cut around the pick and roll, and when you’re twisting the screen, flipping the screen, re-screening, and trying to time a cut at the same time, and not really sure, there’s this dance going on between the one and the five and the middle third, any thoughts or teaching points on when they should actually cut?
Tiago Splitter 15:02
Yeah, so those are a little bit, another drill that we do in the warmups and it’s like the three on zero. So let’s say you have a guard, you have a wing and you have a five, right? So three on zero, we just work on our Iverson cut.
And then at the last third moment of the play, like you said, there’s a one five pick and roll and your pointer attack one side. So this term that we use here is staying connected. It’s not genius or anything like this. It’s just, you know, I’m staying connected to the ball handler and I’m reading what’s going on. And guys just start to improvise. And you know, everybody, if the ball screen guy is going left, everybody just go left. If it’s coming to my side, where it’s two, somebody got a cut, right? So one guy is like drifting and another guy’s cutting. We work in the flares and drift. So all those menus goes together on those warmups, that menu that we gave in the beginning of the season and they start to read throughout the game, right? And then it’s just, let’s say my Tyson war is a great cutter and he reads the protection pretty well. So let’s say there’s a one five pick and roll. There is two defenders involved in the ball screen and there’s three guys, what we call protection, right? So those guys are protecting the play behind this ball screen. So one guy just lost, he’s not seeing Tyson war. He just cut on the back and there you go. You got an advantage.
There’s a great chemistry of these guys playing three, four years together, which helps a lot. I’m not gonna lie. They know each other, they know when to cut. They look to each other. They talk on the free to before and they say, hey guy, you know, I know they doing this. They being aggressive on the passing lane. I’m just gonna cut. So, you know, those relationships between the years helps a lot.
And like I said, you know, I used to talk to the point guards and build those relationships to get those extra points here and there, they do the same. They know each other. They talk on all those warmups that we do. We try to put together those units that are gonna play together. So they build that chemistry. They know what each other’s likes to do. And we go from there.
Pat 17:16
Coach following up on the cutting maybe a little bit of a hypothetical question because you said You have the benefit that there is a core group in Paris that’s been together for a while and they know how to play together I know how to read cuts or maybe past teams you’ve been with if it was a new team and you looked at cutting Similar to the flip. What do you think about maybe adding a call to the end of a play determine a cut?
Tiago Splitter 17:39
Yes, we do that with flips. We do that with stampedes. We do that with cuts. So let’s say we want to attack a weak defender with a stampede. So we put this guy on the last man. So the under the rim on the, I don’t know how you call it, but the me, whatever. So we just make a play where we play a one pick and roll pass pass to the corner. That guy got to close out your techno week defender on a close out or a jump shot. We can do that. And we do it. So just put in a play. Okay, guys, let’s attack this guy. Number 11 on this compete on certain plate. So let’s go, whatever play we call, and we just attack him on this compete, for example, or on the cuts. If the defense is aggressive and they take him up again, we can read that and use the cut to kind of like take their defense a little bit out of balance.
Dan 18:34
The other thing within this pace and speed and creating advantages is it almost feels like your team never catches it stationary. They’re always catching on the go on the perimeter, whether they’re catching stampeding, they’re catching and flipping and moving to a new space. I would imagine there’s teaching points in there too, about when you’re attacking in the half court, catching it on the move versus like the old triple threat where you catch it off two feet.
Tiago Splitter 18:59
I think this is one of the worst things in basketball, the triple threat. This I learned with Pop, to be honest. If you guys remember that second unit, I played for Spurs with Manu Ginobili, Patty Mills, myself, Boris Diaw, Danny Green. So that second unit was all about 0.5. This is how Pop will teach us 0.5. You have 0.5 seconds to make a decision. You’re shooting, you’re driving, or you’re passing. So gotta be quick decisions. That’s why if my guy is open, shoot it. You got someone on you, drive it. You see a guy open, pass it. So this is basic. Of course, there’s guys that will hold on on the ball more, especially DJ and Adir. They have the green card to do that a little bit and use the dribble to create because they are very good at that. But the rest of the guys, no, you got one job is in shoot the ball if you open. There’s one close to you, you drive, you see somebody open, you pass. Clear, very clear.
Pat 19:57
You’ve referenced it a lot, the Iverson cut and just playing through less sets, but you don’t only see it with your team, but a lot of teams in Europe playing less sets, but playing a lot through the Iverson, why the Iverson and not turn out or a horns.
Tiago Splitter 20:11
I think the thing that is a little bit different in America or NBA to European basketball is so you see way more like hedges and shows and aggressive defense where those defense gotta bring the weak side of defense on the paint and to protect the rim, right? Because the five or the four is outside hedging. So, when you have Iverson cuts, you switch in the side of that help constantly. So, that’s why we want to create a change of last man many times we can to create confusion.
This is why we play Spain actions a lot too because you take that last man out of the place and you just try to confuse the protections behind the ball screens. I think that’s the whole goal of the Iverson cut and we try to do it pretty high so you cannot bump it too much. I think if you start the Iverson cut too low, it’s too easy to hug the player and hold. We try to start at half court with speed, already in transition, we’re not waiting anybody which is gone. You open, you shoot it. If you have the drive, you drive it. I think that’s why we like to do it and it creates a lot of like exchanges of sides in basketball.
Dan 22:37
Coach, this has been terrific so far. Thanks for your thoughts there. We want to flip over and transition to a segment we call start, sub or sit. We’re going to give you three options around a topic. Ask you which one of those you would start, which one you would sub, which one you would sit. So this first one has to do with first year head coaching decisions. And I’m going to give you three options. Your start here would be the one that takes up the most head space for you or more than expected. So which one of these, your start would be caused you to think about the most, took up the most head space for you. So start, sub, sit. The first option is personnel decisions, who plays, who subs, all those kinds of things with your personnel. The second option is practice planning, what to do, how to do it, how much time. The third option is game planning strategy, how you’re going to play, how you’re going to put the game plan together.
Tiago Splitter 23:33
Okay. Easy. The game planning is the hardest one so you gotta start that, that’s where we spend the most time. Second will be practice planning and the last one will be I think because we had a formula already and it was pretty much easy for us.
Dan 23:50
With the game plan, your start, moving from an assistant to head coach. What did you find were the harder things about coming up with, or not even coming up with, but deciding on what to do game plan wise?
Tiago Splitter 24:02
The harder thing to do is let’s say we facing a team that are great against, you know, our aggressive defense, they’re great passers. You stick with your best type of defense or you adjust for a more like flat type of defense and you’re less aggressive and you make them play more one-on-one type of game. So I think that’s the main thing that every coach got to go through. If you stick with your best, your A-game, or you adjust a little bit what you do to try to accommodate that for the game that you play next day, right? So that’s always like, what should I do? What’s going to work? What’s not? Or you just say, okay, let’s go with our A-game and as adjustment, you have B and C just in case we need it in the game. But I think that’s what we, you know, spend time with.
Dan 24:54
And for you as the head coach this year, in making that decision, did you find a pattern of how you came to a decision, whether you stuck with plan A or went to plan B or things that you felt you needed evidence for to change?
Tiago Splitter 25:10
Yeah, it’s tricky. I mean, we try to, you know, get numbers, but sometimes the numbers are tricky, not enough games. Oh, let’s see how many times we use the adjustment and how many times you work, how many times you didn’t. Sometimes it is. I’m not gonna lie. I got feeling in the middle of the game. It is emotional. Fuck that. I’m doing opposite, you know. And sometimes it’s how you show to the team. You call a timeout and listen. Fuck all that shit. We’re gonna switch everything and let’s see if you guys got it. You know how you show it to the team. You give them confidence. You go from there. But yeah, I think that’s the decision that every coach got to take. And it’s hard to put numbers and be too much scientific about it. To be honest, it is hard because this is an emotional game. It’s a momentum game. You got to feel what’s going on with the players.
Pat 26:05
Practice planning, game planning, you’re receiving a lot of ideas, suggestions, and I guess when it came to your decision-making process, how did you filter through the advice, the suggestions of your assistants, or maybe how you thought about planning these strategy meetings?
Tiago Splitter 26:22
When I’m driving or the night before, I have an idea what I want for practice, but I still ask my assistant, what should we do today? What are you guys feeling like? What are you hearing from the players? How are they feeling? They feel tired today. Are they fresh? Are they excited about today’s practice? So I’ll try to take a little bit everything in count and be democratic there. At the end of the day, I take the decision. But yeah, sometimes we have some heat up conversations. No, we should do this. No, screw that. We need this. We need defense. No, we’re good in defense. Let’s work on our offense. So, you know, I let it go a little bit. I give them a line, you know, like when you’re fishing, you just give them to see where the systems go. And we had some good conversations throughout the season and we got to know each other. We got to understand how everybody think and people from different backgrounds. And I love that because everybody’s different. So usually it’s always like different opinions.
Pat 27:22
After a game, when you made the decision on how you want a game plan, you made some adjustments. How after the game did you think about evaluating your decisions to also grow as a coach and obviously your team move forward?
Tiago Splitter 27:36
Usually, like after the game, I sit down with my guys and shit, I screwed this up. I shouldn’t, you know, take this guy or put this guy on, or I should not change our defense or I should not, blah, blah, blah. I go hard on myself. But it’s normal. I try to use those moments to learn at the heat of the moment. I think it’s when you learn the most. It’s true that you didn’t watch the game yet and sometimes your perception after you watch the game is totally different than the idea you had after the game at the locker room. You know, sometimes I’m pissed with the players and you guys didn’t do this, you guys didn’t box out. And then, you know, I go, I watch the game, shit, we box out, the ball just bounced pretty, you know, far from everyone and they just got it. So it’s tricky, but yeah, I try to learn the most I can on this post games analysis.
Pat 28:29
On this decision-making postgame analysis, maybe it’s hard to generalize, but did you find that maybe when things went wrong, it was you getting caught up in the heat of the moment, maybe too emotional, or maybe trying to just overcomplicate, trying to maybe, let’s say, get too cute with sometimes some of your decisions versus just keeping it simple, which is who your team is.
Tiago Splitter 28:50
Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re saying everything. I think there is a balance of getting emotional, trying to push you guys. You can go too far where you start to lose your mind and you’re not thinking straight. I think there’s a balance there and you’ve got to be careful.
Also, the adjustments, right? Like, okay, should I just stick there and give them a little bit of one more defense, one more defense. And, you know, maybe it’s okay. You just got to do the same, but a little harder, a little better, a little bit more focused. For sure. I learned a lot this season, you know, throughout these heat moments, try to keep my composure the most time and try to be clear and give a clear message to the players and simple. Of course, I wasn’t perfect far from it, but I learned a lot this year as, you know, first time head coach.
Pat 30:51
All right, coach, moving to our last start subset, we’d like to talk about resiliency, we’ve heard you mentioned it a lot when talking about your career and then also, you know, this team. And so we’d like to ask when resiliency breaks down or things that will maybe test the resiliency of a team in your opinion, and the start would be the biggest factor in deteriorating the resiliency of a team. Our first option would be poor communication. Our second option would be just the mental stress of a season, you know, outside influences, kind of all that goes in, whether they’re playing their shots going in there, and then the third option would be just physical health as well, injuries, guys banged up, like you mentioned, you know, they’re just not excited to come to practice today or unable to perform to their abilities due to some sort of bang up.
Tiago Splitter 31:42
So we have communication, physical, and the second one, which one, sorry? Was the mental stress. The mental stress, yeah. I think the second one, the mental, is really something that I tried to help them a lot this year. Just trying to use my experience as a former player and putting myself on their shoes, right? I don’t think communication was an issue for us, you know, the way we play and we were pretty much connected. The guys were amazing on the court and off the court. The injuries of the body, you know, it hurts your team if you’re tired. I try to rest as much as I could throughout the season. This was very similar to our NBA season for us. We have way worse traveling than the NBA. We traveling commercial flights and staying in airports and early mornings, late nights. So way worse than the NBA where you just have your private plane and just get out of town. So it was a lot about film, talking to them, taking a chair, sitting in the locker room. Listen, guys, I know what you guys are going through. Just give me, you know, 20 more minutes. Let’s go. Let’s do this. I give you guys a day off tomorrow. Two days off doesn’t matter, but we got to go through these 20 minutes here. Let’s fight for this. Give everything you guys have. You guys get tired in the game. I give you a minute. You guys get back to the court and just try to support them on this mental, whatever they’re going through. I think the harder thing for us was mentally throughout the season was, well, at the beginning, nobody has any expectation, which was good for us because we’re just going to go. We’re going to surprise everyone. Let’s do it. And then we won 10 games in a row. We first in the Euro Leauge, and then we lost two, three, four games in a row. Then I think it was the most critical part of the season. Okay. How I’m going to go to Panatinaikos and win this game away against one of the biggest teams in history of Europe against 20,000 people. How I’m going to build this guy’s up. Just try to put myself in the shoes, guys, we got nothing to lose. Let’s do this. Let’s play as hard as we can and that’s it, right? So build them up again. Lose doesn’t matter. That’s okay. One more. One more. Let’s do our basics well. And we go from there. Shots going to go in. Just let it fly. You guys open. Shoot it. I don’t care. Shoot it. Drive. Shoot. No doubt on your mind. I think that was the biggest challenge for us this season.
Pat 34:17
Off of what you just said there and looking at the communication aspect and maybe tying it to the first start sub sit, as your first time as a head coach, what did you learn about communication, how you communicate from, you know, when you were assistant coach and now being a head coach?
Tiago Splitter 34:33
If I will start again this season, I’ll tell this, sometimes we take for granted like simple stuff, like hand signals, because sometimes so loud you cannot even communicate with you guys. Or you calling a play too long, let’s say, oh, we’re gonna call away, D-H-O, flip, blah, blah, blah, okay, so maybe we should do two down or two side or two twist. Instead of like using this long type of plays, I think that was a little bit like stuff they used to do with the Spurs, and it was everything just have a meaning behind every word, but sometimes you were like long ass names of plays, right? And sometimes it’s just easier to say two down when you have 20,000 people just screaming at you and you can’t even see the other side of the court because there’s smoke of the cigarettes or stuff like that. There’s a different crowd out here, so I’ll tell you that.
Dan 35:30
Coach, I’ve heard you tell a story before about maybe it was your first season with the Spurs and you asked Popovich something about, hey, love to play more, or he grabbed you off the bus saying, hey, are you okay? And you mentioned, you know, I’d love to play more. And he kind of said to you, hey, you’re not going to play this year, or, you know, it is what it is. And I think I heard you talk about that kind of helped you having that clear communication, even if it was bad news as a player. And I guess what you took from that and how you talk to players now about playing time and roles and things like that.
Tiago Splitter 36:03
So this is one of the toughest things I think for a coach, but I really appreciated that when I play basketball. The guys, you know, coaches being honest to me, okay, I’m going to play, I’m not going to play, you know, you’re going to train me, you’re going to fire me, whatever, but just being clear and honest. I think you have to do it. In the end of the day, the players will appreciate that .This is what’s one of my first meetings with the guys here, I said, listen, you guys have any question, come talk to me. You know, why are you not playing? Why are you not playing more? Why am I back up and not a starter? So I’m just going to give you the reasons, the whys and we’re going to go from there. And what are you going to do to maybe increase your minutes or to start or to get the shot you want or play more the play you want? I would try to be the clear and the most honest I can. And like I said, Popovich was that type of guy. I remember one day, maybe my first pre-season there with Pop, I just came from Europe. I was like the best five in Europe, you know, starting posting up every play. And he stopped the breaks. What the hell are you doing? You’re not in Europe anymore. You know, there’s one guy who’s going to post up and that’s Mr. Team Duncan, you’re not going to post. You’re going to grab there, you’re going to go uphill DHO, you get back to Tumano, you set the screen and then you roll again. Okay. So, you know, it’s just part of the deal. You got to understand your role. And I think I was, I always follow the rules. I try to follow the rules. And that’s why I played so many years with the Spurs because I adapt myself to the system. And that’s how you gain the confidence of your coach and get minutes.
Pat 37:46
What you said there you figure out how to adapt yourself to a system when players are struggling to adapt How much you think about maybe you not changing the whole system But pieces to help that player versus trying to help that player adapt
Tiago Splitter 37:59
guys, look at the pros and the cons, right? So if I had just my assistant to the player, he’s going to give me more. That’s going to be, you know, plus minus better for the team or less. So I got to kind of like, you know, okay.
This guy cannot play over some kind of, okay. Let’s, he’s a great double drag player. All right. When he’s on the court, you might have to do more double drags, you know, stuff like that, because he’s not used, he doesn’t see the space the same way. Maybe he needs more time. Maybe after two, three months, he’s going to be more either some type of player. So, you know, I try to help them a little bit and give them a little confidence. And maybe we playing against a smaller team. So let’s try to implement new things for this guy and give him more minutes. Well, that’s, you know, the things that you got to balance throughout the season.
Pat 38:51
You mentioned something really interesting that me and Dan have been thinking a lot about. But you said someplace, maybe in the Irish city, he struggles to see the space. How do you help players see space again versus trying to figure out what spacing they can see?
Tiago Splitter 39:04
It’s a little bit individual or what they like to do. Are they comfortable passing? Are they comfortable shooting? Are they comfortable driving to the basket? What is their main skill? For example, Iverson, that there’s our Iverson cut, which is one up. DJ Schwartz is very, very, very good at it. Nadir, not so much, he’s still learning. He’s still adapting. He got so much better throughout the season, especially when Lo was injured, so he had to play more Poincare. At the beginning, I was like, Nadir, just drag up and go from there. Just read the first one. And if you open, you shoot it. If you’ve got two guys on you, you pass it, simple. Just make it simple for him. Sometimes you gotta do it. Just make it simple for the players. And so they see the spacing, try to do it, the side they like to do. So if they left-handed, like Nadir and DJ, you try to use that space and work in practice and repeat over and over again. So they are very used to those muscle memories are on 100%. And hopefully they can read that in the game and take the best decisions.
Dan 40:12
Absolutely. Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. That was a lot of fun and thank you for coming on the show today.
Tiago Splitter 40:20
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here with you guys and I listen many of you shows on Spotify So you got some good insights there
Pat 40:29
We appreciate that.
Dan 40:30
Thank you. Appreciate that. Coach, our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Tiago Splitter 40:40
Well, I think I’m not going to lie. After I finished playing, I was a little bit forced to stop playing basketball because of injuries. So, you know, at 31, I was basically retired. So I was trying to figure it out what I’m going to do. I was living in LA and I was calling everyone in the league, like, what should I do? I was not sure what to do.
And then Sean Marks, which is the still GM in Brooklyn with the Brooklyn Nets. He gave me a, listen, I’m going to give you this opportunity. You’re going to come here to New York basically for free. You stay in the mornings with the coaches. In the afternoon, you spend time with the front office. So you see how the business is run. And after a year, you decide what you like to do and you invest in your career. So I think, you know, going to New York and make them move, bring my whole family there, like I said, basically for free, spend that year in Brooklyn was the bad thing I did. Had a chance to see how is the business. I was the front office. I was the coaching without the pressure of making decisions, taking decisions, just listening, you know, how, you know, they would decide to trade for a guy, how they will decide what the pick and roll cover is going to be, how they decide who is not going to play in that night, just being there and learning from these guys was amazing. And I saw another side of basketball that I didn’t know, you know, as a player, you don’t see that you don’t see the coaches, you know, MF all the players on those meetings and why we don’t do this, why this guy’s so soft, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you don’t see that. But once you’re there, it’s kind of like funny. And, you know, you see all the emotions that are there on the table. I learned so much that those years in Brooklyn were great. And I’m very, very grateful for the Nets and Sean Marks for that and Kenny Atkinson also.
Dan 42:39
Pat, that was awesome. You and I are huge fans of watching Coach Splitter’s team play this year. Paris is one of our favorite teams to watch. I think anybody that asks us who are some teams to watch in the offseason, we often have Paris and amongst a handful of other teams that we really enjoy. Let’s dive into our top three takeaways and for that I will kick it to you.
Pat 43:01
My first takeaway, of course, we’ll have to start with our first bucket to watch their team for any amount of time. You’ll see that they play with tremendous pace and just the way they create advantages. And I think we’re seeing these trends, not only in Paris, but we had a great conversation with Coach Francesco Tabellini, who also plays a very similar style, but how they think about ball screens and pace and creating advantages. And today, hearing Coach Splitter on it was tremendous.
And the first takeaway of this bucket was the other thing that’s obvious is how simple they play from the standpoint of offense. And he hit it like they just are constantly working on maybe one spacing, one set play to Iverson. And from that familiarity, their ability then to really rev up the pace and then start to scale complexity. Because as he said, they’re just hitting on it every day. It’s the same thing in a good way, obviously. But they talked about the 2 and 0, the 3 and 0, building these relationships and giving them the menu. But with anything, it’s not changing. They’re not, okay, now we’re going to go to this set, now this set, this set. It’s just one thing over and over, and the guys get comfortable with it. And then, of course, they start to explore. And I think we hit on a little bit too when we got into cutting two things from, let’s say, the first part of that bucket that I really liked is, I mentioned kind of a quote, when you just start to play faster, the sooner your team will get better. And that he prioritized no drill longer than six minutes. And he’s kind of bled into their substitution pattern as well, maintaining the intensity, maintaining the pace, just how, yeah, I think a realistic approach to understanding how they want to play and what they can realistically ask from their players.
Dan 44:44
Yeah, I agree with all that stuff. I kind of starred the six minutes for the drill segment. That was not a miss. We talked about it, but that would have been interesting to spend more time maybe with him just on what a daily practice looks like. We kind of got the sense. We talked about the two on O, the three on O. Like he did give a little bit. I think we all got the sense of what it was, but I think that’s a very interesting thought, nothing more than six minutes, how it tied into, if you’re going that hard, probably shouldn’t be able to play longer than that.
If you’re playing the speed, we need to play. And you kind of bled into then how they play in the game, how they’re subbing constantly so these guys can empty the tank. The other couple of things that I’ve starred and liked around your point were the step ups versus the East and West ghosts. He kind of talked about those are two different things that can create a similar advantage. And I like that when you watch teams that run this style, that is just free flowing pick and roll, step ups, ghost screens, I always see the differentiation between these East West ghosts where they’re kind of guard to guard or guard to forward, and they’re creating confusion versus these kind of North South step ups where they’re twisting, re-screening, and they kind of seamlessly blend both of those. Paris does really well. I liked the brief time we touched on that. And I also liked how we got into the difference between TJ and Ephie and how we touched on a briefly, the differences between those two players, but I thought it was well said and so true that like, okay, yeah, you’re running the same system, but these two players are different. And so they’re doing different things to help these two different players. And that’s of course, what good offense, what good coaches do.
And I liked him talking about, Hey, TJ shorts is not historically unbelievable three point shooter. He will shoot them and he will make it, but like their bigs and their guards know they’re trying to go under and you’re just trying to figure out a way to get him downhill to his left hand. So we can get to his mid range and pass and all that. Versus he, for you who can really shoot it. And he’s going to face more hedges and switches. I thought that was really great in there as well. Lastly, Josh King spoke about this on the podcast a couple of times. And it reminded me of it today with coach splitter, Josh King, when he was at this time with Ludicksburg was saying how some of the toughest teams that they would face in the German BBL were not the ones that had a million sets that they had to prepare for, but the ones that had like four or five that you’re like, they just execute them to death. And those were the harder teams to beat in his opinion. And it kind of reminded me of coach splitter day talking simplicity, but intricacy as the season builds. That’s a good callback.
Pat 47:15
because I completely agree with Coach King said at the time and then getting to hear Coach Splitter and building off of your point when he did the, kind of the case study of T.J.
Shorts and Adir Heefi, I really enjoyed to the flip screen versus maybe the passing it to attack hedges, hitting the bigs and kind of getting to get action there. And, you know, from there, it also got in a little bit to the cutting conversation. I liked in his point on how they choose, maybe use some stampede calls to put weaker defenders in the last spot.
Dan 47:44
I started that too because I thought that was interesting because if they’re in the slot, I would imagine they’d be looking to stampede from the slot against that defender 2 game plan. So you can either extra pass it to the corner and attack a stampede from the corner, or you can stampede from the slot like we see a lot. That’s the fun part, probably the not jumping ahead to the game plan stuff starts upset, but those things, I’m sure, are baked in there as well.
Pat 48:07
Speaking of the game plan, the good transition maybe I’ll throw to you for the second takeaway from our conversation.
Dan 48:14
Yeah, and I’ll stick on the first year head coaching decisions, start, subset, you know, in our research, we had heard him talking on other podcasts about the different types of first year head coaching decisions that creep up on you, that you don’t realize it till you’re in it in the first month and you’re making all sorts of decisions that pile up. And we thought it’d be interesting to see what took up the most head space.
And I’ll just go to a start. It is so different making final game plan decisions as a head coach and weighing all the things that you’re trying to weigh in that first year. And I got the sense that he thinks pretty deeply about it. And then I liked sort of the follow-up stuff to about afterwards. And he talked about how he’s pretty hard on himself and, you know, the review process, what he thought about how he interacted with his staff, I thought was really good and it seemed like he had the personnel stuff and maybe even the practice plan more locked in, I guess is what I took from it. They kind of had a personnel way to play. So maybe for some coaches, that is a bigger thing. If you’re trying to always figure out your seventh, eighth, ninth man. That’s a lot of conversations on staffs. It sounds like this year they had a pretty set personnel way to play. So that took some off, which is nice. You spent more time on the game plan and the practice plan stuff.
Pat 49:27
I thought you asked a really good follow-up when he was going kind of through his game planning decisions and preparing for opponents, whether it’s, you know, kind of stick with your base versus starting with an adjustment. And I really liked your follow-up on kind of just getting the considerations he thinks about when to make or not make that decision and hearing him speak on that. And then kind of the secondary is like, well, what in the game, what it looks like when they will decide to adjust or, you know, and he went through a number of show where it’s just kind of you get in like an effort mode, like we’re switching everything now versus like, no, we need to do it harder, do a little bit more focus, and we don’t need the adjustment here.
Dan 50:03
He was really good talking about the adjustment versus non-adjustment. Maybe you just need to play harder, maybe more confidence. It reminded me of, I believe it was, Jeff Van Gundy’s second episode with us. We were talking about adjustments from game to game in the middle of a series in the playoffs. He was saying, sometimes it’s like, did we play hard enough? Did we execute this hard enough? There’s no huge major tactical adjustment. It’s just, do we need to play harder? His point was well taken by me about the decision between staying with what you’re doing or going to plan B because maybe as a head coach, at times there’s this feeling of if I’m not adjusting or doing this out of a timeout or this out of halftime, am I actually coaching? Sometimes the better coaches just understand I’m not adjusting. This is going to work or this is better or rather than do something average in the first half and switch it and do it below average in the second half, it’s better just to try to do it better in the second half to give yourself a chance to win. That’s obviously the art of this whole thing.
Pat 51:08
I think he talked about that gray area well and the weight that it plays on our minds. And one of my follow-ups was kind of trying to hit at that point. I mean, I think as a, you know, anytime you’re a first year head coach, young head coach, whatever, as you just go through it, you’re going to make those mistakes both ways, but as coaches, maybe do we have the tendency to over-complicate things and that can mess up adjustments to your point, or we get over-emotional and you kind of have like knee-jerk reactions and not being able to regulate ourselves, you know? And again, very valuable insight, Dave, coach splitter on what he’s learned from evaluating his decisions and maybe, you know, also from conversation we have in the past, like understanding like what triggers you as a coach to help you avoid rash decision-making.
Dan 51:49
Well, Pat, moving to our last start sub or sit, I will kick that back to you. Looking at.
Pat 51:54
This one, I thought he had really good thoughts on communication and how he tried to help his team with some mental stress. One of the more enjoyable parts of that conversation was at the end, you know, he had alluded to it throughout the conversation, just, they really play a lot out of Iverson if they’re gonna play kind of a set play.
And so just asking why Iverson, and again, it’s not just Paris, you’re seeing it with a lot of teams, or just strictly Iverson team if they’re gonna play a set and enjoyed his thoughts on just, I think, comparing and contrasting, like, teams are more aggressive, they’re gonna see more hedges in Europe, and the Iverson is just constantly switching the sides. So it’s just, from the get go, you’re testing the ability of the defense to communicate and set up their shell. And then he hit on a really interesting point when he talked about some players can see space. So again, in this Iverson, some players, as he said, like TJ Shorts can see the space coming off the Iverson, receive the ball and understand if they can attack, pass or play out of it. And then I think in this case, you know, Kefi or, you know, any other pick, whatever player, maybe they’re not good off the ball and that they need the ball in their hands and just run them more off like a double drag and they can see the space much better. And now we as coaches try to identify what actions or spacings they do see and trying to put them in that. And I’m glad we went deeper on it because I think it is such a meaningful part of how you strategize around the skill sets of your players.
Dan 53:17
The other point on top of all this is going back to the first bucket a little bit is when you play so simply It allows players of different skill sets to still be super effective because you can tailor things Towards a player that sees space better than the other. It’s not like you have to have this whole complex system I think you mentioned you tailor the system to help a player you tell your player to help the system more and it’s like that Back and forth between a coach and you know overall who are your best players and what’s gonna be best chance to win So I agree with you there.
I did want to just touch on what our start subs. It was which was the resiliency Yeah, because in our prep he’d mentioned it a bunch is that’s what he was proud of this team for having I think he mentioned it having it his own career and I like the part about the communication aspect and if you’re not communicating at a high level Coach to player player to player These little Stress points of the season and break your team. I think he gave the example of you could see how stress can build up They win ten in a row They’re a top of the table and you’re a league and then they lose these like you said three or four in a row I believe and if the communication if the bonds between the players and the staff aren’t pretty solid We’ve all been on those teams that can get to a tailspin pretty fast Yeah, so I liked him talk about that kind of going back to the way pop talked about role clarification It was just like some good stuff in there too from my end on the question. Yeah
Pat 54:43
I like the example he gave of their own season because he’s completely right and what you touched on. I think maybe you can have some cracks in your foundation that can be kind of smoothed over with winning, of course. But then now after they won 10 in a row, they had the expectations. They weren’t the underdogs anymore.
They were the hunted and then they lost three in a row. And that’s where those cracks can really start to fester and really disrupt the foundation that maybe you thought you were building if it wasn’t on solid ground and being able to be tested like that. And I think that shows the true test of your resiliency, but then the culture, the communication, the relationships, all that is where that tough times lean on to get through it and get back on the right track, so to speak.
Dan 55:27
I had I gave a quick miss earlier anything else of course not from coach Splitter with me.
Pat 55:34
I think I go back to looking at different types of screenings for the different types of point cards. And I know another big part of our game is switching. And so we talked about attacking unders, attacking hedges, but I think maybe what changes or what they talk about in those 1-5 pick and rolls, when they know teams are going to switch, and again, how they’re looking to create advantages for TJ Shorts, who maybe isn’t going to just step into threes versus Nadir Hifi, who for sure, if you watch his game, we’ll take those threes. And so what changes, if anything, on how they think about screening against switching?
Dan 56:10
Yeah, 100%. They do it really well. I mean, it just feels like every time you watch them play, they’re going to create an advantage to every possession for the most part. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. They just are so good at personnel driven and action driven. They’re going to get someone in the paint. It’s going to happen.
Pat 56:26
What happened? That reminded me, you brought up a really good follow up question. Looking at pace, one thing you can think about pace is that first six, seven seconds trying to get a shot. But I think another way to really look at pace and when you look at Paris is just being able to quickly get to the next action and playing fast. And maybe you take a shot in the last five, seven seconds of the shot clock, but you’re still having the pace. And I think that’s another key distinction and that what we also really appreciate from Paris is just, yeah, it’s not that they’re just jacking up quick shots, you know, it’s that they can still continue to play deep into the shot clock and maintain this pace.
Dan 57:06
Well, once again, we thank coach Splitter for coming on. Thank you everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.
Pat 57:17
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit SlappinGlass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.