NBA
Can Jordi Fernández resolve the Brooklyn Nets’ identity crisis?
The Spanish coach, who currently working as an assistant at the Sacramento Kings, will take charge of the Nets starting next season.
It was inevitable that the day would eventually arrive and now it has - according to Adrian Wojnarowski, the infallible ESPN journalist, Jordi Fernández will be the new coach of the Brooklyn Nets starting next season. The 41-year-old Badalona-born coach will become the first Spaniard to occupy a head coach position in the NBA. Until then, he will end the season in his current role as assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, where he arrived as a highly trusted signing of Mike Brown.
According to Wojnarowski, “Fernández has emerged as the Brooklyn Nets’ choice to become the franchise’s next coach, separating himself in a wide, month-long search that now has the Nets prepared to hire the Sacramento Kings top assistant”.
Another insider, The Athletic’s Shams Charania, revealed last week that Fernández was one of three candidates for the job alongside Mike Budenholzer (NBA champion in 2021 with the Milwaukee Bucks) and Phoenix Suns assistant coach Kevin Young.
Nets endure tough season
For more than a month, and with the aim of restarting a franchise that has been suffering a tremendous identity crisis, the Nets have searched for an ideal profile for their team. After the dissolution, a resounding failure, of the big three that formed Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden (now with the Suns, Mavericks and Clippers respectively), the New York franchise has fallen into the deepest irrelevance: 32-50, 11th in the Eastern Conference.
They even failed to make it to the play-in and with a crude situation in terms of draft rounds due to the aggressiveness with which they faced transfers like Harden’s, which sent a good part of their future prospects to the Houston Rockets. Jordi Fernández, 41, is the one chosen to put a team back in the right direction in which Jacque Vaughn started the season and ended it, after his departure, Kevin Ollie. Mikal Bridges is the key figure in a team which features players such as Ben Simmons, Cam Johnson, Cam Thomas, Nic Claxton, Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith.
Fernández joined the Kings in August 2022 and made his way up the ranks to become an associate head coach with the team by the end of the year. He started out in 2009 with the Cleveland Cavaliers in player development then spent six seasons working with Michael Malone’s staff for the Denver Nuggets, which included time with former Kings head coach Mike Malone.
In June 2023, he replaced Nick Nurse as the head coach of Canada’s men’s basketball team, leading them to the bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished assistant coaches currently working in the NBA and his name has been mentioned several times for high-profile coaching positions during recent months, including the Charlotte Hornets.