Utah Jazz: Martin Schiller officially named Salt Lake City Stars’ head coach

Martin Schiller has been formally announced as the new coach of the Salt Lake City Stars, G-League affiliate of the Utah Jazz.

With international ballers Rudy Gobert, Ricky Rubio and assistant coach Igor Kokoskov leading the charge, the Utah Jazz are basketball’s answer to the United Nations. The multi-cultural organization bolstered its international profile again on Wednesday.

After several weeks of rumblings about the move, the Jazz have officially announced Austrian national Martin Schiller as the new coach of the G-League’s Salt Lake City Stars. 2 Ways and 10 Days’ Adam Johnson first reported on Schiller’s potential hiring back in June.

According to Deutscher Basketball Bund, Schiller will join Salt Lake City on a two-year contract.

Schiller comes to the Stars with a handful of Jazz connections. Back in 2015, Jazz assistant coach Alex Jensen joined him in his work with the German national team. Jensen sang Schiller’s praises to The Salt Lake Tribune in July —

"“He works hard, and that’s what you want out of a coach,” Jensen said. “He’s very detail oriented like a lot of Germans [sic] are. It’s great.”"

Most recently, Schiller coached former Jazz big man Jack Cooley during his stint with MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg of the Basketball Bundesliga.

Ludwigsburg was just the latest stop on his tour of German hoops. In addition to his ongoing role with the national team’s coaching staff, Schiller was a player development coach with the Artland Dragons of Germany’s ProB League. He also spent time with WBC Raiffeisen Wels of the Austrian League.

The Vienna-born, Hamburg-raised Schiller now takes the reins of a Stars squad that won just 14 games last season and finished dead-last in the Pacific division. He’ll replace Dean Cooper, a holdover from the team’s days as the Idaho Stampede. In three years with the Stars/Stampede, Cooper directed the club to a 43-107 record.

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By crossing the Atlantic to find their next G-League coach, the Jazz organization has bolstered its already diverse cultural make-up. As the old saying goes, you can never have too much of a good thing,

The Schiller hiring is the second major move announced by the Stars this week. On Tuesday, Jonathan Rinehart was announced as the team’s next president.