Cleveland Cavaliers had interest in center Tiago Splitter

The Cleveland Cavaliers called up center Tiago Splitter over the summer.

In an interview with HoopsHype’s Jorge Sierra, 32-year-old free agent center Tiago Splitter revealed that he received a call from the Cleveland Cavaliers in the offseason for a training camp invite.

"“I’ve received invitations to training camp, but no formal contract offers. I didn’t think I was ready for that, so I decided to pass and start thinking about a potential coaching career. Pretty much all teams reached out with invitations to camp. I talked to Cleveland, Utah, Clippers… I did some workouts, but no guaranteed offers.”"

With 32-year-old Kendrick Perkins receiving a training camp invite (and recently waived, though he could latch on with the coaching staff), it’s not hard to fathom Cavs general manager Koby Altman calling up Splitter to gauge his interest in coming to training camp although Splitter has only played in 44 games in the past two seasons and only played in over 60 games once in his career. The injury-prone center said as recently as three weeks ago that he had an injured hip and was exploring a coaching career after missing the multiple games in the past two seasons with calf and hip injuries.

At 6-foot-11 and 245 pounds, having injury issues in his lower extremities is crippling to his career. That’s likely why Splitter didn’t receive a guaranteed offer, even on a minimum deal. His future durability, in addition to the fact he’s only played in 26.8 percent of the possible regular season games in the last two seasons, doesn’t make a man like Dan Gilbert want to give him $1.3 million and have to spend $4.6 million to keep a player on the roster who is unlikely to stay healthy, let alone stay on the roster throughout training camp.

(For those that would bring up the injury history of Derrick Rose, Rose has played in 90.3 percent of all possible regular season games in the least two seasons and is three years younger than Splitter.)

When healthy, Splitter is one of the more skilled big men in the league. Splitter averaged 2.2 assists per 36 minutes in his career, has a career offensive rating of 116 and had a team-high offensive rating of 136 in the San Antonio Spurs title-winning 2014 postseason run.

Offensively, Splitter has a solid assortment of low-post moves, can knock down jumpers away from the rim (although he’s unlikely to venture out that far) and is an above-average passer for his position (an ability no doubt enhanced by the coaching of Gregg Popovich).

Defensively, Splitter was a great pick-and-roll defender with length and the mobility to consistently make plays on the interior although he wasn’t a premier shot-blocker. He had a career defensive rating of 101 and out of his 14.4 career win shares, 10.9 win shares were defensive.

While it’s unlikely that Splitter would have made the Cavs regular season roster, it would have been interesting to see he and LeBron James on the same team. One of James’ most infamous blocks came against Splitter and the Spurs in Game 2 of the 2013 NBA Finals.

For his career, the former first-round pick averaged 7.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 0.6 blocks in 19.2 minutes per game.

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*All stats referenced from www.basketball-reference.com