TUALATIN — Tiago Splitter had seen teams celebrate notable individual achievements with elaborate championship belts and flamboyant gold chains.
But when the Portland Trail Blazers acting coach was searching for a way to recognize exceptional defense and further cement the team’s DNA, he wanted to come up with something unique.
“I tried to think a little bit outside of the box,” Splitter said.
Actually, he tried to think inside the box.
Splitter and the Blazers started a new postgame ritual this week that recognizes defensive prowess, unveiling “The Box” and a season-long chase to celebrate a part of basketball that often goes uncelebrated.
The Box is just that — a small wooden box — but this one is specially-designed with the Blazers in mind, featuring red trim, trademark pinwheel logos on all sides and a padlock. It was unveiled after the Blazers’ win over the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, when Splitter sauntered to the center of the postgame locker room toting a nondescript cardboard shipping box.
He plopped the mysterious box in the center of the room on a small table, slipped The Box out and explained the new ritual to his team.
Moving forward, after every win, the Blazers’ coaching staff will select a player they deem to be the “best defender of the night,” and that player will scribble his name down on a piece of paper and slide it into the box. At the end of the year, the players with the most entries will win a to-be-determined prize.
“It’s kind of dope, man,” Robert Williams III said. “I think it’s motivation … (less about) a prize, but to have pride on defense when you walk in the locker room at the end of the night. Personally, if somebody tells me someone played better defense than me, I take that personal. So I think it will help in that aspect for sure.”
If The Box seems to draw inspiration from Toumani Camara, the Blazers’ most accomplished defender, well, that was by design.
Splitter had been searching for a way to inspire his injury-ravaged team to fight harder and play better defense when his mind drifted to Camara and his signature defensive celebration. Camara, who was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team last season, often draws an imaginary box with his fingers in front of himself after making an exceptional or important individual defensive stop, as if to say he trapped the offensive player in a box.
The ritual, Camara said, started during his first season in the NBA.
“I feel like it’s an identity that I was kind of finding for myself my rookie year,” Camara said. “There was a game against Cleveland where I was playing great defense against Darius Garland. I kept getting stops in the front court, and I just drew the box instinctively. I think it’s because I was watching some football highlights and I saw some … DBs (do it). I really love the way they move their feet, their footwork, and … one of the main celebrations that I liked was the box. I just wanted to bring that to the basketball court.”
When the Blazers were promoting Camara for the NBA’s defensive honors last season, the signature celebration was featured prominently.
So, it was only natural for it to come to mind when Splitter was batting around ideas for his new season-long motivational tactic.
“I wanted to do something for the group, (offer) a little reward for a good defensive day,” Splitter said. “And I thought about Toumani, one of our best defenders, and the sign that he does with the box. I thought that was something funny to do, interesting, and the guys would like it.
“I asked him before I did this: ‘Toumani, I’m going to use something that is your signature.’ And he was like, ‘No, no, I like it. It’s cool. So let’s do it.’ I think it’s good for the mojo of the team, the energy, the vibe and, like I said, to reward defensive plays.”
Once he settled on a concept, Splitter went about creating the box. At first, he said, he tried to construct his own, tracking down lumber from a local hardware store and building it in his garage.
“But it doesn’t look that good,” he said, chuckling. “This one looks better.”
When Splitter’s creation wasn’t to his liking, he asked for help from someone in the organization and The Box was crafted. The Blazers traveled with it, concealed, at the tail end of a trip earlier this month, lugging it to Memphis and New Orleans inside the cardboard shipping box. But the Blazers lost both games, so the contents remained a mystery until Sunday night.
“We didn’t know what it was,” Williams said. “We thought someone won an award or something, and we were trying to figure out what award it was. But it was creative, man. We needed that.”
It’s not as outlandish as Lou Brown’s life-sized cutout of owner Rachel Phelps in the movie “Major League,” but the hope is that The Box helps inspire the Blazers to rediscover their defensive identity.
Portland boasted the NBA’s third-best defense over the second half of last season and ranked among the league leaders early this season before injuries and illnesses derailed a promising start. Ten different Blazers have missed a combined 133 games this season.
The flood of absences has included all three of the team’s point guards, all three of its traditional centers and a pair of defenders (Matisse Thybulle and Blake Wesley) who were important fabrics of the team’s DNA.
As a result, the Blazers’ identity has disappeared; they enter Tuesday night ranked 22nd in the NBA in defensive rating (117.2).
Splitter said he would like to see the Blazers improve in a host of areas, ranging from boxing out and rebounding to navigating pick-and-rolls in the team’s defensive schemes to good old fashioned one-on-one play.
At the very least, The Box should serve as a unifier until the Blazers regain their health.
Sidy Cissoko, who led the Blazers with a plus-minus of plus-16 against the Warriors, became the first Blazers player to put his name in The Box. After Splitter announced the new postgame ritual and declared Cissoko the debut winner, the 6-foot-6 guard rose from his stall and mimicked Camara’s signature celebration, drawing an invisible box in the air.
The locker room erupted in applause.
“I think everybody is excited,” Camara said. “Sidy was excited to put his name in there. And I think a lot of people are going to try to put their name in the box, too … it’s a good concept from Coach.”