Ask a Brooklyn Nets executive about the team’s tank — excuse us, “playing the possibilities” — and they will explain that the key to getting into that top three lottery seed is not so having the head coach make bad decisions but depriving the head coach of the talent he needs to win before the season begins.
In the end of course, it has to be both but to preserve integrity, the latter is the more efficient and yes, ethical. It’s why the roster was the youngest in the NBA not just this season but in the past
20 seasons, why the payroll was the lowest by far and yes, one reason why the team drafted five rookies — the Flatbush 5 — then added three more over the course of the season. Developing them was and will have to be the key goal for Sean Marks & co. but it also serves as an acceptable rationale behind all that losing.
At the center of all this is Jordi Fernandez, the head coach. As C.J. Holmes of the Daily News wrote this week, it hasn’t been easy. He points in particular to one telling piece of video…
With 4.1 seconds left in the first half of a game the Nets were already losing 69-55 to the Hawks, Jordi Fernández rose to argue a take foul call on Nolan Traoré, walked slowly back down the bench, dropped into a seat between assistants Juwan Howard and Steve Hetzel and covered his face with his hand as the YES Network cameras zoomed in.
It looked like a coach trying not to let the season swallow him whole.
The clip went viral because it was funny. It also felt uncomfortably on point. That was Brooklyn’s year. And it was Fernández’s, too.
It’s easy to say that from this point forward, all the pressure on the 42-year-old will be to win, not check Tankathon. But, it’s going take a while for Fernandez to get to even .500, though. He’s currently 46-118 through his first two seasons. He even admitted the toll it had taken.
“You don’t know how to deal with your emotions until you have to do it. It’s really hard. Because you want to go out there and win games like the Boston game or Orlando when you’re right there.”
“I remember getting the job and some people were like ‘Oh, it’s going to be hard. It’s not going to be easy’. I always have a positive mindset; I’m like ‘Oh, no, we’ll be OK’. [But] it’s really hard because you want to go out there and win.”
A veteran assistant coach, Fernandez was experienced enough going into his interviews for the job that things could go south. In 2024 when Fernandez was talking to Marks and Joe Tsai about the job, he was told that the Nets could trade Mikal Bridges and begin that long, slow slide and hopefully a revival … sustainable success. Two months later, the Bridges deal was done, the die was cast.
He is not a martyr. He’s a basketball coach and as Holmes writes, he accepted things for what they are.
To his credit, he never sounded detached from it all. He didn’t hide behind the rebuild. He didn’t talk like development softened the sting. If anything, he sounded like a coach who felt every loss and still understood the assignment.
That in itself deserves praise. So does his willingness to examine his own work with the same honesty the Nets demanded from their players.
“I’ve gotten better by making mistakes and realizing that I’ve made those mistakes and owning those mistakes from the beginning,” Fernández said.
And of course this season was never, ever about winning, particularly at the end. As noted, development was the mantra. At Monday’s post-season presser, Marks said he “obviously” liked what he saw from his rookies.
“Our rookie class specifically played more minutes than anyone else in the league from a rookie class standpoint,” he told reporters. “That’s something we’re certainly proud of. There’s excitement about the next 3-4 months of this summer. Talking to the coaching staff, I know they need to get away but they are all excited about what lies ahead of them.”
“One of the biggest lessons from an on-the-court perspective is that they got to feel what a real NBA athlete and game feels like and the preparation that is involved. Sometimes that takes a year or two, or maybe even three to get 40 games under their belt. A lot of our guys were exposed to it early to what that feels like.”
Fernandez gets nearly universal high marks from his players and league executives for both x’s and o’s and development. He was not afraid to call out play he didn’t find acceptable but mostly was positive. His frustration was often matched by his players and he was there not to coddle but encourage. He also got kudos for managing the process. In addition to his nine assistant coaches, live coaching analysts, he had Mfon Udofia and four assistants on Long Island.
As one league decision maker said about Fernandez when asked if all that losing affects his standing in the league. “No, no,” he said. “Jordi will be there a long time.”
