Paris basketball players were a hit in the Eurocup last season - with 22 wins and one loss, and attractive basketball, the team from the capital of France, founded in 2018, won this competition for the first time in history and qualified for the Euroleague.
A team from the capital of France in the Euroleague - it was the desire of the leaders of the competition, who for years talked about expanding the market to Paris and London. One of their wishes came true, the other, that the team from London plays in the Euroleague, has not yet.
Paris achieved historic success under the leadership of Tuomas Isal, who was named the best coach in the Eurocup last season. But, the young Finnish expert decided to continue his career in the NBA league, more precisely in Memphis, where he will be on the coaching staff from this season.
And while Isalo wanted to build a career in the strongest basketball league in the world, the legend of Brazilian basketball, Tiago Spliter, decided to come to Europe. After a career in Brooklyn (2019-2023) and Houston (2023-2024), where he was a member of the coaching staff, Spliter accepted the offer this summer and became the coach of Paris. The former Brazilian basketball player was in the coaching staff of the national team this summer, which qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris. Two years ago, he was the coach of Brazil for players under the age of 23 at the "GLOBL Jam International Showcase" competition in Canada.
At the beginning of this season, Spliter and Paris are doing better in the domestic competition than in the Euroleague - in the LNB championship, Paris has a score of 3-1, while in the Euroleague it is 1-3. In the Euroleague, in uncertain matches, they lost to Red Star, Olympia from Milan and Bayern Munich, and defeated the current European champion - Panathinaikos. The victory over the Athenians is the first in the Euroleague for both Paris and Spliter in their coaching career in this competition.
"We played against the champions of Europe and no special motivation was needed. This is a great victory for us. Before the start of the match, I said that PAO is 106 years old, and Paris is only six. I am proud of this club, the team, the coaching staff. Thank you to everyone who gave me the opportunity to be here and lead this team," said Spliter after the match with Panathinaikos.
Tiago Spliter started his playing career in his homeland, and then in 2000, as a 15-year-old, he arrived in Europe. The destination was Vitoria. and the club - then Tau Keramika.
The period spent in Spain was touchingly described by Spliter in an article for the Brazilian website UOL, where he talked about how he arrived on the Iberian Peninsula as a child, how his mother took care of him in the beginning, what trials he went through, but also how later, at the peak of his European career, he lost his sister, who died of leukemia in 2009, and who also played basketball.
"The peak of my career in Europe happened when I was going through the most difficult period in my life. I won the King's Cup (2009), the title (2010), was the MVP of the regular season and the MVP of the final (2010), but I was desperate, because my sister passed away. I was thinking about whether I made the right move to come to Europe, whether I should have returned to Brazil," Spliter wrote in the aforementioned text.
During his ten-year career in Spain, Spliter became one of the best centers in Europe. He won the Endesa League twice, the Cup three times, and the Spanish Supercup four times. In 2008, he was selected to the ideal five of the Euroleague, and twice he was in the second best five. Spain was followed by a trip to San Antonio in 2010, which three years earlier selected him from the 28th position in the draft. During the NBA lockout in 2011, he briefly played for Valencia.
In the NBA, he had to adapt. He arrived as one of the best players in the Euroleague at that moment, and then in the Spurs he had to come to terms with the fact that he would not initially be one of the most important basketball players in the legendary Gregg Popovich's rotation.
"I was one of the best players in Europe, and then I came to the NBA. But I didn't play. In the beginning, I wondered if I deserved to be in the NBA," the Spliter once said.
He pointed out that Popovic once noticed that he was depressed in training, so he talked to him, convincing him that his time would come.
And his time came, but, unfortunately, it was short-lived. He played an important role in the 2013/2014 season. when the Spurs won the ring, and Spliter became the first Brazilian with an NBA title. Injuries followed, which caused him a lot of problems, he could not play at the top level, so San Antonio decided to part with him in 2015, in order to free up space to bring in Lamarcus Aldridge. He went to Atlanta, and then to Philadelphia, but due to injury problems over two years, he played only 44 games, the last in 2017.
It was in the aforementioned text for the UOL Spliter website that he described the kind of struggle he was going through with injuries. It all started in the last season in San Antonio, when the hip problems started, and then the calf injury. He had chronic hip problems, underwent surgery, missed the 2016 Rio Olympics, said he couldn't sleep because of the pain, which is the main reason he decided to end his career in 2018.
"I've decided to end my basketball career. It's a decision I made a few months ago. I didn't want to stop playing basketball, but the hip injury is more serious than I thought and is giving me a lot of problems. The decision was not made easily, especially since practically my whole life I play basketball, but I had to decide on such a step," Spliter said in 2018.
After finishing playing, he started his coaching career. As he said recently in the Euroleague series, dedicated to the rise of Paris, when he finished his career, he realized how much he missed basketball and that it was impossible for him to do any other job. His first job was in Brooklyn, where he stayed for four seasons, and then spent the previous one in Houston.
In the meantime, Paris embarked on a new ambitious project, with the aim of becoming a stable Euroleague. In the Euroleague series, one of the club's owners, David Kahn, the former head of basketball operations in Minnesota, explained that Paris chose Spliter for one reason - they wanted a young coach who would grow together with the team.
And who is Spliter's coaching role model? It was in the aforementioned series that the 39-year-old Brazilian emphasized that he especially followed the work of the Golden State coach, Steve Kerr. Kerr wrote NBA history with Golden State, Spliter is just at the beginning of his coaching journey.
And, if the coaching career is as successful as playing, then Spliter could be a future big coaching name.
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