O’Donnell: Will ‘The Unknown Brazilian’ lead the Bulls out of the NBA’s southern hemisphere?
IT'S PRETTY SAFE TO SAY that few NBA fans at the United Center ever pass timeouts chatting about famous Brazilians.
In more recent years, they may have cursed ownership or basketball ops duds Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley or concessions prices that make airport kiosks seem like Dollar Stores.
But conversations about Pele or Oscar Schmidt or Gisele Bundchen — the former Mrs. Tom Brady — are probably as rare as bowl drops by Red Panda.
THAT'S WHY NEWS THAT Tiago Splitter — yes, that Tiago Splitter — will be the new head coach of the fall club prompted a whole lot of “Say what?” around the team's more cynical support base.
He's 41 years old, 6-foot-11 and was once a star player in the EuroLeague.
He followed that with a knockabout seven years in the NBA, including a sole championship season with San Antonio (2014).
Beginning in 2018, he packin' trunked through a series of roles on pro sidelines, culminating with a hire as an assistant with Portland last summer.
That chair quickly grew exponentially more expansive last October when head coach Chauncey Billups got netted in a gambling investigation and the Blazers tabbed Splitter as interim head coach.
THE UNKNOWN BRAZILIAN HELD THE TEAM together well enough to finish 42-40 and win a play-in game.
That resume upgrade should have been enough to get him a full reload at Portland's Moda Center, correct?
No, and in a Chicago hiring sequence more glacial than Jerry Reinsdorf's full plans to gentrify the West Loop corridor, fresh-eyed basketball maestro Bryson Graham is making Splitter his first head coach.
GRAHAM MAY BE NEW to West Madison Street.
But he clearly understands the standard Reinsdorf family gambit of selling “hope” on the sports ops sides and relentless genius in the gold mines of business.
From a franchise that has a list of new-mill head coaching designates that includes Jim Boylan, Vinny Del Negro and Jim Boylen, what's left to lose?
Billy Donovan split before they had a chance to reconsider his plaque at the Naismith Hall.
So Tiago Splitter comes in with a whole lot of “Say what?”
IF HE SUCCEEDS — and there's a boulevard full of West Side samba parades to pursue — hooray for the latest ream of “UC Hope.”
And if he fails?
Blame it on Rio.
And those carnival-friendly unknown Brazilians.
STREET-BEATIN':
Segments of New York media are already calling for a statue of Jalen Brunson to be placed outside of Madison Square Garden. The Stevenson High alum will probably be able to really relax after Thursday's NBA championship parade, when he can finally get away from the nuttier parts of the Knicks' extremely rabid following. (Some are UFC-scary.)…
Every wise guy in Vegas expected the host Spurs (minus-5½) to win last Saturday's Game 5. Key to that thinking was that ABC would get a clinching Game 6 back at The Mecca, complete with postgame programming from all around NYC. Instead, San Antonio's greenness again bled through, although the most impressive Spur this side of conditioning-challenged Victor Wembanyama was Dylan Harper. He's an EA version of his old man — five-ring Ron Harper — with healthier knees. …
Broadcast MVP of the dual NHL-NBA Finals on ABC was Stanley Cup play-by-play man Sean McDonough. A case can be made that he is the best major game caller of any sport in the land. McDonough is so properly cadenced and deeply informative that he could call a 90-plus pickleball championship in a fog and make it zing. …
The Cubs' swooning keeps making that inevitable question crawl to the top of the ivy: Who should go first — Jed Hoyer or Craig Counsell? With rumors of Theo Epstein's next magnum opus percolating, is Hoyer near a voluntary departure to rejoin his old No. 1? …
Ryan Baker's exit as lead sports voice at WBBM-Channel 2 produced so few ripples that it again underscored how irrelevant local TV news in Chicago has become. Best of breed remains the pre-dawn magical milkman's matinee on WGN-Channel 9, featuring Lauren Jiggetts, Dan Ponce and Morgan Kolkmeyer, once a basketball mainstay at Harlem High near Rockford. (She's 5-foot-9.) …
Huskie-eyed Mike “Ajax” Korcek reminds that Northern Illinois alumni can toast the Knicks' title: Assistant GM Walt Perrin was a member of the fabled NIU team that beat young Bobby Knight and Indiana in DeKalb. Perrin also won an IHSA crown playing for Jack Burmaster at Evanston (1968). Burmaster's summer job was as golf pro at the original nine-hole layout — complete with lights — that Marje Everett installed between the Arlington Park Hotel and her race track way back when. …
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.