As C.J. Holmes of the Daily News wrote<\/a> this week, it hasn\u2019t been easy. He points in particular to one telling piece of video\u2026<\/p>\nWith 4.1 seconds left in the first half of a game the Nets were already losing 69-55 to the Hawks, Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez rose to argue a take foul call on Nolan Traor\u00e9, 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\u00a0YES Network cameras zoomed in.<\/p>\n
It looked like a coach trying not to let the season swallow him whole.<\/p>\n
The clip went viral because it was funny. It also felt uncomfortably on point. That was Brooklyn\u2019s year. And it was Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s, too.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to say that from this point forward, all the pressure on the 42-year-old will be to win, not check Tankathon. The emphasis has changed. It is going take a while for Fernandez to get to even .500, though. He\u2019s currently 46-118 through his first two seasons. He even admitted the toll it had taken.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know how to deal with your emotions until you have to do it. It\u2019s really hard. Because you want to go out there and win games like the Boston game or Orlando when you\u2019re right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cI remember getting the job and some people were like \u2018Oh, it\u2019s going to be hard. It\u2019s not going to be easy\u2019. I always have a positive mindset; I\u2019m like \u2018Oh, no, we\u2019ll be OK\u2019. [But] it\u2019s really hard because you want to go out there and win.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2026 sustainable success. Two months later, the Bridges deal was done, the die was cast.<\/p>\n
He is not a martyr. He\u2019s a basketball coach and as Holmes writes, he accepted things for what they are.<\/p>\n
To his credit, he never sounded detached from it all. He didn\u2019t hide behind the rebuild. He didn\u2019t talk like development softened the sting. If anything, he sounded like a coach who felt every loss and still understood the assignment.<\/p>\n
That in itself deserves praise. So does his willingness to examine his own work with the same honesty the Nets demanded from their players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gotten better by making mistakes and realizing that I\u2019ve made those mistakes and owning those mistakes from the beginning,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n
And of course this season was never, ever about winning, particularly at the end. As noted, development was the mantra. At Monday\u2019s post-season presser, Marks said he \u201cobviously\u201d liked what he saw from his rookies.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur rookie class specifically played more minutes than anyone else in the league from a rookie class standpoint,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019re certainly proud of. There\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez gets nearly universal high marks from his players and league executives for both x\u2019s and o\u2019s and development. He was not afraid to call out play he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
As one league decision maker said about Fernandez when asked if all that losing affects his standing in the league. \u201cNo, no,\u201d he said. \u201cJordi will be there a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ask a Brooklyn Nets executive about the team\u2019s tank \u2014 excuse us, \u201cplaying the possibilities\u201d \u2014 and they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7264,7,670,247,3803,568,677,2559,248,1260,6,671,3596],"class_list":{"0":"post-712238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-barclays-center","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-brooklyn","11":"tag-brooklyn-nets","12":"tag-brooklynnets","13":"tag-getty-images","14":"tag-hawks","15":"tag-head-coach","16":"tag-jordi-fernandez","17":"tag-mikal-bridges","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-nets","20":"tag-sean-marks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116418706276437824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}