National Basketball Association

Atlanta Hawks: Can Tiago Splitter Stay Healthy?

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Tiago Splitter’s career has been dampened by injuries. Can he finally stay healthy for a full season for the Atlanta Hawks?

Things have changed drastically for the Atlanta Hawks. Al Horford and Jeff Teague are gone, Dwight Howard has come home, and somehow they still look like the best team in the Southeast Division.

Of course, that assumes they complete the season with a mostly healthy roster. Howard tends to end up on the shelf from time to time, but the most injury prone player on the roster is Howard’s backup.

Tiago Splitter has played in 59, 52 and 36 games during his last three seasons and has dealt with an assortment of nagging injuries during that time period. He’s played more than 60 games in a season just once, 2012-13 with the San Antonio Spurs.

When Splitter signed a four-year $36 million deal with the Spurs in July 2013 he was still a starting center. Never the most offensively skilled player, Splitter was still reliable. He could finish in pick and roll sets, he set good screens, and he was a reliable rim protector.

Maybe the Spurs overpaid him, but he was a solid starting center.

Then the league changed. The center became less important in the modern NBA. His mounting injury history and the fact that he’s not a versatile stretch-5 made it clear that Splitter was destined to be a backup for the remainder of his career.

A talented and valuable backup, but still a backup.

Before the 2015-16 season the Hawks acquired him from San Antonio for essentially nothing. The Spurs needed to move Splitter to create cap space to sign LaMarcus Aldridge so the price was only the draft rights to Georgios Printezis and a future second round pick.

During his first season with the Hawks, Splitter played in only 36 games. Hip surgery in February ended his season early. In the games he did play he wasn’t exactly an impact player. It was clear for most of the season that Splitter was not right physically.

He averaged 5.6 points and 3.3 rebounds per game on 52.3 percent shooting with a PER of 13.79. Splitter only played 16.1 minutes per game until the injury ended his season.

There is good news. It looks like Splitter is healthy just in time for training camp. According to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Splitter has been cleared for “significant participation” in practice.

Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer spoke about having Splitter healthy and ready to go.

“With Tiago, everyone is really happy with his progress,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. “With the hip, if you are just talking specifically about the hip, everybody feels like it couldn’t be going much better. Now, it’s getting all the muscles and everything that goes into being ready to play up to speed.

“We are expecting him to participate in camp, maybe not at 100 percent participation but significant. I think more of the scrimmaging and real basketball stuff to see how he is doing and be conscientious that whenever we use him it’s in real live basketball environment.”

The Hawks won’t expect much from Splitter this season. With Howard holding down the starting center position he’ll once again be a backup. If he can stay healthy, play good defense, and grab rebounds for 20 minutes a night off the bench he will have done his job.

This is the final season on Splitter’s current contract with the Hawks. If he proves he can remain healthy and productive for a full season he might be able to land one last decent contract as he gets deeper into his 30s.