'He's Like a Brother': Alperen Şengün Reflects on Tiago Splitter's Impact on His Career
Şengün worked closely with Splitter in Houston and now faces the Trail Blazers for the first time since he took over as acting head coach.
📍HOUSTON — Alperen Şengün always knew that one day Tiago Splitter would be a head coach.
Maybe not under the circumstances that it happened, but the lone season they spent together in Houston in 2023-24 had the Rockets' All-Star center convinced that the assistant coach who worked most closely with him was going places.
When Splitter joined Ime Udoka's staff with the Rockets in 2023, he was tasked with working regularly with the young Turkish center, who was going into his third season.
"He taught me a lot," Şengün said Friday morning at the Rockets' shootaround before they play the Trail Blazers tonight. "He's like a brother. I had a brother-ship with him."
Splitter only spent one season in Houston before taking a job as the head coach of Paris Basketball, a team in the top French league, LNB Élite. The coach he replaced, Tuomas Iisalo, had been poached by the Memphis Grizzlies to join Taylor Jenkins' staff, eventually becoming the head coach when they fired Jenkins near the end of last season.
Şengün kept in close contact with Splitter during his season in Paris, but he knew his former coach had bigger ambitions.
