Tiago Splitter, The Portland Trail Blazer’s current Interim Head Coach, got his first head coaching job with Paris Basketball in 2024. His stint in Paris was short, but in his only season he took Paris Basketball to the French Championship as well as the French Cup. He also qualified the club for the EuroLeague playoffs, the first time a French team achieved that honor. Splitter built his success in Paris on top of the success of his predecessor, Tuomas Iisalo, current coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.
This week Eduardo Tansley of The Athletic wrote about Paris Basketball’s stunning rise to prominence and the role played by Iisalo and Splitter in the club’s success [subscription required].
Paris Basketball’s origin starts in 2018, when David Kahn, former president of basketball operations for the Minnesota Timberwolves, led an investment group that bought the professional license from Hyères-Toulon Var, a team beset with increasing debt and poor performance on the court. The new ownership moved the team to Paris with a goal of quickly becoming a force in European basketball. That goal has largely been achieved. After beginning in the second tier of French Basketball, the club has not only subsequently joined the top flight, but has ascended to the top echelon of French basketball and is making noise in European competitions.
Splitter and Iisalo shared similar styles and philosophies while at the Paris club, emphasizing maintaining a high tempo attack.
Iisalo, who joined Paris after winning the BCL with German club Telekom Baskets Bonn with fast-paced basketball, simplified his high-speed approach when speaking on the X&O’s YouTube channel in January: “If you get more shots than the other team and you make them at a better percentage, you are winning 100 percent of the games.”
Tansley writes that playing with speed is a way of being able to compete as an underdog against teams with more financial resources. Paris Basketball is not a poor club by any means, but its budget lags substantially behind many of the giants of European basketball such as Panathinaikos and Real Madrid.
High tempo also happens to be a trend in today’s NBA. The Trail Blazers are pursuing it in the 2025-26 season.
One way that Splitter and Iisalo differ is in the amount of pressure they find themselves in. Splitter’s situation is of course unusual, taking over after the suspension of Portland’s head coach Chauncey Billups after his arrest on wire fraud and money laundering charges related to alleged fixed poker games. While Splitter’s future is unclear and complicated, he is coaching a young and promising team that is likely some ways away from truly contending. Iisalo on the other hand has two significant stars in Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr., and were hoping to make significant strides towards becoming a true competitor this season. Instead, they find themselves tied with the Blazers with a record of 8-12.
More significantly, there has been dissention between Morant and Iisalo, leading to a one game suspension for Morant. Iisalo might find himself on the hotseat sooner rather than later if he can’t get the team on the same page rather quickly.
The Blazers take on the Grizzlies on Sunday, December 7 at 3:00pm Pacific in Memphis.