It’s at least two hours from Grand Rapids to Detroit, but it felt even further for Nate Wolters.
The Minnesota-born point guard played 12 games for the Pistons’ D League affiliate, somewhat fittingly called the Grand Rapids Drive, at the tail end of the 2014-15 season. Wolters, who was looking for a chance with a third NBA team that year, felt invisible to the Pistons front office executives who would make that decision.
“I don’t know if they saw me play,” he recalled, “or if they saw our whole team play for a month.”
Wolters won’t have that problem with the Salt Lake City Stars.
He already has seen general manager Dennis Lindsey at several Stars practices, which are held in the same basketball facility as the Utah Jazz’s. Wolters, who is on a new two-way contract in what is now called the G League, anticipates bouncing between the Stars and Jazz quite a bit, and the transition, he thinks, will be effortless.
“We’re running a lot of the same sets, not as much of them, but lot of the same terminology,” he said. “When you go up and down, it’s not much of an adjustment.”
The Jazz’s G League affiliate isn’t necessarily aiming for championships, but rather player development in their second season since relocating from Boise. And with that goal, the Jazz have pursued a streamlining between the two franchises: similar coaching, similar schemes, similar environments to the extent that is possible for players who toil in gyms for a tiny fraction of the salary that NBA stars make.
“We want them to feel like it’s not two separate entities,” Stars vice president of basketball operations Bart Taylor said. “This is one organization with teams that are very in tune with each other.”
Enter new coach Martin Schiller, a 35-year-old who cut his teeth in the German Bundesliga. The Austrian-born and German-raised coach befriended Jazz assistant Alex Jensen when they both coached for the German national team. Jensen suggested Schiller might be a candidate who would be a good fit when the Stars looked for a replacement for Dean Cooper.
Schiller, the only international coach in a field of 10 candidates, immediately stuck out to Taylor as an energetic, intelligent and charismatic leader. Schiller watched several full Stars games to prepare for his interview, and he questioned the Jazz brass at length about them.
“I could just tell there was a different level of looking into it and being in-depth into foreseeing, ‘Hey, if I’m the coach of this team, shouldn’t I be doing this?’” Taylor said. “It was refreshing and good to see.”
The two bonded in Tel Aviv as Schiller was coaching the German team and Taylor was scouting. They talked “every night” about philosophies and basketball. From afar, Schiller long had admired the Jazz’s style of running sets and emphasizing ball movement instead of setting up isolation. He was hungry for his first head coaching role, and if he had to adopt someone else’s style, he hoped it would be a style he believed in.
“I really like it a lot,” he said. “I would say the Jazz are the most European team in the NBA, talking about movement of the basketball. It’s not, like, totally new to me.”
Jazz coach Quin Snyder opened everything to Schiller: meetings, plays and more. Over several weeks in Utah training sessions and in camp, Schiller got a feel for the system the Jazz run and gained some ideas about how he would mimic it himself. He still has talks with Snyder, and even more with Jensen, trying to pick his brain about the Jazz and what they do.
It helps that two-way contracts, which allow two G League players per franchise to spend up to 45 days up in the NBA per season, came into effect this year. Schiller was able to work with Wolters and Eric Griffin ahead of time and get a feel for who they were as players. Jazz first-round pick Tony Bradley also is expected to get time with the Stars this year.
Griffin said he feels a high comfort level with Schiller. The biggest barrier is language.
“He has to talk slow to me sometimes,” Griffin said. “Other than that, everything is coming along good. I know when I come back up, I won’t be out of place.”
The results on the court might be ugly some nights, particularly with the constant roster flux. The Stars opened with a 131-88 loss in Austin, having missed a few of their best players for their short training camp.
Ultimately, the results the Jazz want will be in the development of players like Bradley, Griffin and Wolters, not wins and losses. But Snyder, who once coached the San Antonio Spurs affiliate in Austin, has sympathy for the enormity of Schiller’s challenge.
He once called Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and told him he wasn’t sure he could play the Spurs’ style in the D League. Popovich told him to keep the core concepts and try his best, which is fundamentally the same advice he gave Schiller.
“He’s embraced what we’re doing, particularly from a systematic standpoint,” Snyder said. “How much he can really use or apply with all the challenges of the D League, whatever he’s doing, we have total trust in him.”
UTAH JAZZ AT HOUSTON ROCKETS <br>Where • Toyota Center, Houston <br>When • 5 p.m. MDT <br>TV • AT&T Sports Network <br>Radio • 97.5 FM/1280 AM The Zone <br>Records • Jazz 5-4, Rockets 7-3 <br>About the Rockets • Houston returns home after consecutive road wins over the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks. ... James Harden is leading the NBA in 3-pointers made (3.9) and attempted (10.6) per game. ... Star trade acquisition Chris Paul, who faced the Jazz in the playoffs last year with the Clippers, will be out with a knee injury. <br>About the Jazz • Center Rudy Gobert had an NBA-leading 25 blocks after Friday’s loss to Toronto. ... Rookie Donovan Mitchell has scored 22 points or more in three of his last four games. ... The Jazz have yet to win on the road, averaging 13 fewer points and 4 more turnovers in road games than in home games.