Jordi Fernandez’s former coaches have long maintained that he was ready to be an NBA head coach.
His current players said the same thing Tuesday.
The Sacramento assistant will get a chance to prove it as he is set to be named the new head coach of the Brooklyn Nets.
Fernandez won after an exhaustive month-long search in which Nets owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks interviewed about a dozen candidates.
Sources said the only person they offered the job to was Fernandez, an associate head coach in Sacramento who helped the Kings become winners.
“I mean, you guys see him. In the game, he’s as good as the coach.” [Mike Brown]. So he’s definitely ready,” Kings star Domantas Sabonis told reporters at a shootaround before Tuesday’s play-in game between Sacramento and Golden State. “He’s comfortable in his skin.”
I bet he almost does.
Originally from Barcelona, Spain, Fernandes has had a dizzying journey to date.
In fact, he returned to his hometown and began coaching as a youth coach at the age of 15, eventually becoming an athletic trainer.
Fernandes has a degree in sports science and is one completed academic paper away from earning a doctorate in sports psychology.
But his love was coaching.
He moved to Las Vegas to join the Impact Basketball staff, where he met Brown, who was coaching in Cleveland.
Within a year, Fernandez had earned a job as the Cavs’ player development coach. The rest is building the foundations for a career in the NBA one by one.
From the Cavs, he worked under Michael Malone in Denver, and then the Browns to become the Kings’ de facto defensive coordinator.
“You’ll see Jordi stand up like Mike on the sideline and tell us what to do defensively, and some offensive stuff as well,” Malik Monk said Tuesday. told. “So he’s been a huge part of everything. Like I said, he’s the defensive coordinator, he’s our coach. So he gives us all the coverage and stuff. I mean, Jordi is a big part of what we’ve done here.”
Now, the Nets expect him to play a big role in whatever he does in Brooklyn.
Fernandez interviewed in Milwaukee and was a finalist in Toronto and Phoenix last summer before finally getting his break in Brooklyn.
“Jordi is a great person and a great coach. He’s going to be a head coach in this league one day. He’s ready for it now,” Brown said a year ago when Fernandez was being courted. told.
Fernandez, named the league’s best assistant this year in the annual NBA GM survey, beat out an impressive list that includes former NBA Coach of the Year and 2021 champion Mike Budenholzer and Suns assistant Kevin Young. I got my chance now.
“It’s great. It’s a testament to how hard he’s worked and it’s an opportunity,” Harrison Barnes said Tuesday. “The opportunity for him to be a head coach these past few years since he started his coaching career has been great, and we wish him the best of luck.”
“He’s going to be a head coach in the NBA. He knows the game and has a great ability to communicate and build relationships with players,” Malone told ESPN.
Now he’s going to get a chance to build them in Brooklyn.
