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The Bulls didn’t just hire a new head coach. They hijacked one of the league’s hottest coaching stories right out from under Portland. Tiago Splitter, who steadied the Trail Blazers as interim head coach after Chauncey Billups was placed on leave amid a gambling investigation, is now headed to Chicago to replace Billy Donovan and lead the Bulls into their next era.
Splitter’s rise to this point has been fast but not accidental. He’s a former NBA champion with the Spurs, a big who carved out a reputation as a smart, team‑first connector in San Antonio’s 2014 title run. After retiring, he logged time in the Brooklyn Nets’ development pipeline and then on Ime Udoka’s staff in Houston, working closely with young bigs like Alperen Şengün.
He even went overseas and proved he could run his own show, leading Paris Basketball as head coach in Europe before returning to the NBA as a top assistant in Portland. So while Tiago Splitter, Bulls head coach might sound surprising on the surface, the résumé is anything but thin.
From Chicago’s side, this is a very clear bet on upside and player development. Donovan stepped down after six seasons, with the Bulls stuck in that uncomfortable middle ground, too competent to bottom out, not dynamic enough to scare anyone in May. The front office reportedly keyed in on Splitter’s track record in development and his alignment with their longer‑term vision for the roster.
They’re not hiring a retread. They’re hiring a 41‑year‑old former big man who speaks the language of modern players and has already navigated multiple locker rooms as both role player and assistant. For a franchise trying to retool around a younger core and squeeze more out of its draft capital, that profile makes a lot of sense.
But the really interesting piece of this is what it means for Portland. Splitter didn’t just hold the interim job. He made the Blazers relevant again in a season that easily could’ve gone off the rails. After Billups was arrested and suspended, Splitter stepped in and immediately had Portland playing above expectations, including a 5–2 burst that turned them into one of the early surprises of the year.
He brought structure, settled the locker room, and leaned into a style that fit a young, hungry roster rather than trying to simply preserve Billups’ playbook. Unsurprisingly, that kind of turnaround sparked real buzz that he might “lose” the interim tag and become the long‑term guy.
Now, instead of debating whether to commit to Splitter, the Blazers are waking up to find the decision has been made for them. Chicago saw the same things Portland fans did — poise in a crisis, buy‑in from a young group, tangible on‑court improvement — and moved quicker. For the Blazers, that stings on multiple levels.
They lose continuity in a season already defined by chaos, and the players who responded to Splitter’s voice are back to wondering what comes next. There’s a real emotional cost when a team rallies around an interim coach and then watches him walk to another franchise.
It also complicates Portland’s broader reset. Billups was put on unpaid leave while the investigation played out, and his future with the organization is still in question. Splitter looked like the clean internal solution — a way to turn the page without blowing up the entire staff and system.
Without him, the Blazers’ front office is staring at a much more traditional coaching search, one that has to account for both the legal cloud around Billups and the expectations created by Splitter’s brief success. Do they promote someone else internally and hope to replicate his voice, or do they start fresh with an outside hire and risk losing some of the identity that just started to form?
There’s also a philosophical layer here. Splitter’s background — Spurs culture, player‑development focus, modern big‑man perspective — is exactly what you’d want if you’re trying to bring along a young core and build sustainable habits on both ends. That profile is leaving Portland and landing in Chicago.
The Blazers now have to decide if they still want to pursue that kind of coach or pivot toward a more experienced stabilizer to reassure ownership and the fan base after such an ugly headline‑driven year. Either way, their margin for error shrinks, because the bar has been set by what Splitter already showed he could do with this group.
The move is understandable from Splitter’s perspective. Chicago offers a cleaner slate and more organizational stability than a franchise dealing with an ongoing investigation into its previous head coach. The Bulls’ leadership clearly sold him on a long‑term vision and the resources to execute it, emphasizing his role in aligning player development with the front office’s strategic direction. In Portland, by contrast, he may have been facing a waiting game, uncertainty around Billups’ contract, ownership politics, and the possibility that even a strong interim run wouldn’t guarantee him the permanent job.
Here the thing folks: League‑wide, this is one of those moments that reminds you how fast coaching markets move. A year ago, Tiago Splitter was an assistant in Houston and a development guy with Brooklyn before that. Then he wins in Europe, steps into a brutal situation in Portland, succeeds as an interim, and suddenly he’s the head coach of the Chicago Bulls.
With that . . . This is a lesson in how quickly a we’ll figure it out after the season stance can turn into we just got beat to the punch. for the Blazers, it’s a lesson For the Bulls, it’s a swing on upside that could age very well if Splitter’s blend of Spurs DNA, European head‑coaching experience, and steady interim work in Portland translates over a full NBA season on the big stage.
If you cannot play with them, then root for them!