Jordi Fernandez, the newly appointed head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, has a daunting task ahead of him. After the Nets finished 32-50 this season and missed the playoffs, delivering a winning brand of basketball to Brooklyn will be Fernandez’s top priority going forward. But now that the pageantry of his hire is behind us, what matters most is if the Spaniard actually has a concrete plan to get the job done.
Within Fernandez’s first 100 days as Nets head coach, he promised fans will see a shift in culture, for the better. It starts with kindness, as cliche as that may sound, and creating an environment that players, coaches and potential free agent acquisitions want to be a part of.
“Working with a group of people, you need to get to know everybody and get to touch everybody, and then from there you can organize everybody,” Fernandez said during his introductory news conference on Wednesday in Brooklyn.
“I trust that building relationships is extremely important — that’s how you get connected.
“And it’s not just me with the players. It’s myself with the coaching staff, the front office, with every single department, strength and conditioning, health, sports performance, the business side, the community. So, I think if you do care and you spend the time to do it, in the long run it’s going to work out. You know, everybody says I build relationships. The reality is I know I’m not good at it, I’m bad at it. What I can tell you is that I try, and I care, and that’s a good start.”
Between the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, what is expected to be a chaotic free agency period for the Nets, and everything else a first-year head coach must do to find comfort ahead of his inaugural term on the sidelines, this summer projects to be a busy one for Fernandez.
How the 41-year-old balances it all will be monitored closely in the coming months. 76ers head coach Nick Nurse, who Fernandez succeeded as Canada’s men’s national team head coach, stepped down from the position last summer because he was stretched too thin after being named Doc Rivers’ replacement in Philadelphia.
For Nurse, a more focused approach entering his first season with the 76ers was better.
“I just knew how much work there was to do in the first six months,” Nurse said. “Hiring a staff, getting to know the players, getting to know the 100 people around the building, all the things you have to do leading up to your first year to get things in place the way you want them to be as quickly as possible, was the reason why I had to step away.”
However, being able to coach in the Olympics is a “dream come true” for Fernandez, and Nets general manager Sean Marks would “never take the opportunity to play for or coach a national team” from him.
Fernandez believes coaching in the Olympics will ultimately make him and the Nets better, and Marks agreed. He will have six weeks to prepare and coach in the Olympics but is expected to report back to Brooklyn around mid-August.
“The more opportunities Jordi has behind the clipboard, the better,” Marks said. “For us, it’s going to be a matter of making sure our summer program is an incredibly robust one. The staff is in place here. We place a high-level importance on summer league and training camp and having this gym available to all of our players and development over the summer. So, making sure our staff is here and that Jordi is in alignment with what they’re working on the whole summer. So just the communication back and forth.”
And by the time Fernandez is settled in this fall, what kind of on-court product should Nets fans expect?
“We’ll have a team that’s extremely competitive on both sides of the floor,” Fernandez said. “A team that is connected, so that means that they care about each other, and a team that is selfless — that will put the team first. I think this will give us the identity that we need. As you guys know, the NBA with 82 regular-season games and then postseason is going to be a challenge. There’s going to be ups and downs, but like I said, if we’re able to fight, if we care about each other, if we put the team first, we’re going to be very good in the long run.”
