Spurs Unable to Bring in Young Brazilian Tweener With Good Skills, Great Hair

If this well-formed elegy is right, and this series is the Spurs starting to unravel, it might be a good (or, for some people, bad) time to bring up Luis Scola and Tiago Splitter.

Scola, as you may know, was traded to the Houston Rockets and eventually became a key part of their runaway win streak. He was even mentioned as a dark horse candidate for Rookie of the Year.

Splitter, the Brazilian big man who has been in the draft every year since I was born, went to the Spurs last summer. Tiago was expected to sign this off-season; in fact, that's got a lot to do with the Spurs' ultimately passing on Scola. But according to Marca.com, Splitter is going to stay overseas (translation courtesy of Hoops Hype):

On Tuesday, a Spurs representative was in Spain talking with Tiago Splitter, trying to convince him to pack his bags and head for San Antonio next season. Didn't work out. It seems that the Brazilian center is set to re-sign with ACB powerhouse Tau Cerámica.

Bummer for San Antonio. So when it's all said and done, they're left with nothing but Fabricio Oberto: Solid, but unspectacular, and clearly the least promising of these three players going forward. And, of course, the oldest. Granted, Oberto's a real center, Scola overlaps directly with Duncan, and Splitter could go either way, depending on how he developed. But the bottom line is that, as the Spurs face the future, they've now blown two chances for some revitalization.

Then again, Parker's young, Manu's not done yet, and Duncan's ageless. All they need is a few slightly younger old wily vets and they'll be ready for next year, right?

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.