Just when you thought the Portland Trail Blazers are facing a turnaround with a playoff appearance in a turbulent season, they have suffered a catastrophic blow to their foundational stability. The locker room chemistry is at risk after losing their highly regarded tactician and 2014 NBA champion with the San Antonio Spurs Tiago Splitter to an interconference rival. This comes after an aggressive, widely criticized cost-cutting campaign by new team owner Tom Dundon which Blazers fans believe is the reason the team lost Splitter.

Dundon, who has built the Carolina Hurricanes into a Stanley Cup contender through disciplined operations, faces criticism for applying similar frugality too aggressively in the NBA. Shams Charania confirmed the news on NBA Today that the Chicago Bulls have successfully finalized a deal to hire Splitter as their next franchise head coach.

“I’m told that the Bulls have reached a deal to hire Tiago Splitter as the franchise’s next head coach,” the NBA insider said. “This comes after Splitter thrived as an interim coach, excelled in his lone season as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, after navigating an adverse situation, taking over just after one game due to the FBI arrest of Chauncey Billups.”

As Charania said, Splitter recently completed a stellar, high-adversity campaign in Portland, where he assumed the interim coaching position just one game into the season when Chauncey Billups was indicted in the FBI probe into illegal gambling in the NBA. While Splitter did rally the locker room to a 42-40 record, securing the number seven seed and a highly improbable playoff berth, including a play-in win over Phoenix, that wasn’t the last of his problems.

Players praised his culture-building; Deni Avdija, in particular, credited Splitter with unlocking his game en route to his first All-Star selection. Then, in March this year, the NBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the team to Tom Dundon. Since then, the team has been going through an aggressive restructure, not just in its lineup but also in its staffing.

While Splitter held the unanimous backing of the Blazers roster, led by Deni Avdija and publicly expressed his desire to continue as the Blazers’ full-time head coach, it didn’t incentivize the new boss. Dundon’s refusal to meet standard market valuations for a head coach in the NBA completely fractured contract negotiations.

Splitter had received a raise from his assistant salary during the season, but offers reportedly stayed well below market.

According to veteran reporter Jake Fischer of The Stein Line, Dundon stubbornly capped his desired head-coaching salary at $1 million to $1.5 million annually.

This range sits dramatically below the baseline NBA head coaching standard of roughly $4 million in 2026. It’s closer to what elite assistant coaches pull in across the league. And Splitter is no longer an assistant coach to Billups. He’s proven he’s worth a lot more.

Rather than rewarding an effective leader with team support who navigated an unprecedented crisis, Portland’s front office chose to lowball their readymade candidate for the position. It just made it easy for the Bulls to sweep in and secure his leadership.

As Charania said, “Now the Blazers are losing him to Chicago. A couple of key factors in the Bulls’ hiring of Splitter. His player development, such as a guy like Deni Avdija in Portland and the job that he did, really pushing him to be an All-Star, as well as just organization alignment with the new of basketball operations in Bryson Graham.”

In short, the Bulls saw that Splitter was worth much more after what he accomplished in a single season with Portland.

Splitter’s NBA playing experience and championship pedigree as a Spurs big man added to his appeal.

Concerns over Tom Dundon’s policies get worse with Tiago Splitter’s exit

Losing Tiago Splitter to Chicago exposes deep operational cracks within Portland’s new ownership structure. Tom Dundon’s extreme frugality is already under criticism by league insiders. Now, even the fans’ worries have manifested about his policies impacting the team’s on-court quality right when they had improved under Splitter and with Damian Lillard’s potential return.

Dundon has defended his approach as long-term, winning-focused, noting surprise at the backlash to items like T-shirts, while regretting some of the execution, such as two-way travel.

Beyond his tactical adjustments, Splitter was the primary architect behind Portland’s player development program, notably unlocking the star potential of Deni Avdija and aggressively pushing the young forward to an All-Star selection.

By moving to Chicago, which kicked off a rebuild phase, Splitter aligns himself with a front office spearheaded by new head of basketball operations Bryson Graham. It shows that he’d have more backing in Chicago than he would’ve had under Dundon’s control, irrespective of financial stubbornness.

Insiders note that Portland’s tighter purse strings have severely crippled their ongoing coaching search, as high-level collegiate and international candidates easily command figures far exceeding Dundon’s rigid price point.

Moreover, Splitter’s departure follows a series of embarrassing media disclosures revealing bizarre cost-cutting measures across the franchise, including mass layoffs.

Portland journalists had previously raised alarms about Dundon’s bargain-bin shopping habits, which were further validated by a Sports Illustrated report from Chris Mannix revealing that Blazers staffers were left stranded at a Phoenix hotel because the franchise refused to pay standard late-checkout fees.

During the playoffs, even Splitter was without the reinforcement of two-way players like Caleb Love, as Dundon didn’t fly them to road games. Splitter was also the unwilling scapegoat of staff ire because of Dundon’s antics.

Furthermore, team president Dewayne Hankins confirmed to KATU that the organization broke years of tradition by refusing to provide fans with free commemorative playoff T-shirts during their playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs to save on arena manufacturing costs.

While minority owner Sheel Tyle attempted to mitigate the publicity fallout on X by claiming the team was planning alternative arena activations, the broader pattern remains undeniable. Moreover, the team lost one of its biggest community outreach anchors, minority stakeholder Nancy Gruber, earlier this week.

By letting a proven culture-builder and former NBA champion like Splitter walk over the median head coach salary, Dundon has signaled an unwillingness to invest in elite personnel. It leaves this team to restart a very restrictive coaching search while operating in a tight financial position.