Jordi Fernandez will be the new coach of the Brooklyn Netsthe chain said this Monday ESPNso he will become the first coach born in Spain leading a team NBA.
Adrian Wojnaroswkione of the journalists with the best sources in the NBAsaid on ESPN that the Spaniard, who is now an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings as well as Canada’s coach, is the first option for the Nets bench.
Shams Charaniathe other great ‘insider’ of the league, detailed last Saturday in The Athletic who was one of the three candidates along with Mike Budenholzer (champion of the NBA in 2021 with the Milwaukee Bucks) y Kevin Young (assistant coach of the Phoenix Suns).
According to Wojnaroswki, Fernández “has emerged as the option of Nets to become the next coach” distancing himself from his competitors and “will get the position of head coach of the Nets”
Fernández led Canada to bronze in the World Cup
Fernándezwhich led to Canada to bronze in the 2023 Basketball World Cup, he is one of the most valued assistant coaches at the moment in the NBA and his name had been heard as a possible head coach of a franchise in recent years.
Without going any further, the Brooklyn is not the only team that had thought about him for next season since the Charlotte Hornets At the beginning of this month they also placed him among their candidates to be their future coach.
“This will eventually come: being in a hurry never helps and I have no anxiety about being head coach. It’s going step by step and it will arrive. And when it will be, it will be,” he told her. EFE Agency the one of Badalona in an interview last February.
“It all adds up. Those of us who have not been first coaches in the NBAIn the end it is also important that they see you in that role, wherever it may be. I have had the privilege of doing it in the G Leaguenow in a World Cup and soon in an Olympic Games,” he said.
41 years old, Fernández the campaign will end with the Kings before taking the reins of Brooklyn. Sacramento (ninth in the West) plays this Tuesday against the Golden State Warriors (tenth) in the ‘play-in’. The winner will face the loser of the duel between the New Orleans Pelicans (sevenths) and Los Angeles Lakers (eighth) for the last ticket to the ‘playoff’.
Some Nets in search of a new direction
The Nets, after the dissolution of the ‘superteam’ led by Kevin Durant, James Harden y Kyrie Irvinghave had a poor season that has not even allowed them to play the ‘play-in’ in the East.
The New Yorkers have finished the regular phase with a sad balance of 32-50 that left them eleventh in the East.
The Nets started the season with Jacque Vaughn on the bench, who was fired in February. Kevin Ollie He was the interim coach since then.
Mikal Bridges is the figure of this group in which other names also stand out, such as those of the controversial Ben Simmons, Cam Johnson, Cam Thomas, Nic Claxton, Dennis Schroder o Dorian Finney-Smith.
In Brooklyn He also coached from 2016 to 2020 Kenny Atkinson, who has dual American and Spanish nationality. Fernández, in any case, will be the first head coach in the NBA born in Spain.
Fernández arrived in the US for the first time in 2004
Fernández came to EU for the first time in 2004 to attend a summer camp and subsequently worked in the technical teams of Cleveland Cavaliers (player development coach from 2009 to 2013), Canton Charge (coach from 2014 to 2016 of this team of the G League affiliated with the Cavaliers and now called Cleveland Charge) y Denver Nuggets (assistant from 2016 to 2022) before making the jump to Sacramento as “associate head coach” under the orders of Mike Brown.
“If my good work gives me that opportunity (to be a head coach), I will be prepared. I believe that I am and will be able to do it,” he told the EFE Agency in 2022.
The key for it to be installed in EU was when he met Brown, who offered him a position with the Cavaliers “starting from the bottom.”
“What the American dream is. I left everything in Spain“In September I moved and I was learning and working a lot,” said this coach in that interview who, throughout his long career in the NBA, has worked on the court and in the locker room with stars like LeBron James o Nikola Jokic.
Josh Lewenbergjournalist for the Canadian media TSNshared this Monday on the social network X player’s opinion Kelly Olynyk (Toronto Raptors and selection of Canada) about Fernández.
“He has been in basketball for a long time. He has that European flair for basketball, which is huge because that’s the way he’s going in this sport. He is a great leader, a great communicator and he is very intelligent,” he defended. EFE
#Jordi #Fernández #Spaniard #coach #NBA #team
