Jordi Fernández Reflects on First Season as Brooklyn Nets Head Coach

Brooklyn Nets head coach Jordi Fernández reflected on his first season in the borough ahead of what he deemed an “extremely important summer.” 

He said: “The best thing that you guys have not been able to see is the day to day. What you guys see is the product on the floor. Besides the wins and losses on the standings, we've got a lot of wins that we consider wins from players getting better.”

Brooklyn finished with a 26-56 record this season, the first of an ongoing rebuild started by the dissolution of the Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving-James Harden big three and accelerated by Mikal Bridges’ trade to the New York Knicks. This was also Fernández’s first season as an NBA head coach. 

The Brooklyn bench boss expounded on how his responsibilities now differed from his previous coaching jobs. Fernández has been an associate head coach for the Sacramento Kings, an assistant for the Denver Nuggets, a player development coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the head coach of the G League's Canton Charge and the head coach of the Canadian men’s national team.

“My job as an assistant is always try to make the head coach's life easier, and now all of a sudden, I'm gonna in a different seat, and my emotions are like, up-and-down because you either want to play a little bit better or win this game or [think about] how to develop with this player [or] how you connect with this player,” he said. “You're worried about a thousand things.”

General manager Sean Marks, who appeared alongside Fernández at an end-of-season media appearance, has lauded the Badalona native’s work. Marks mentioned Fernández’s role in building the Nets’ culture, and the latter also touched on that. 

“I think it's the quality of people that we have,” the 42-year-old head coach said. “The human quality has been great. They've connected with the players from performance to medical to front office to our PR group, our security. The relationships were there, and that's when you get your support, and you get your support on your ups, which it's easy to [...] but also on your downs.”

On the court, the Nets faced more downs than ups. Before the season, the team was pegged to finish with the worst record in the NBA. Even now, the focus from the fan base is strictly on the 2025 NBA Draft, rather than the ongoing playoffs. However, Fernández found some success stories in a tough year results-wise.

He said: “I put Tyrese [Martin] in a tough situation. At times, I put him to play at the point guard, and he ended up with almost a two-to-one assist turnover ratio. That's pretty impressive. Ziaire [Williams] shot, I think his best percentage in the NBA from three, at 34, a little over. [Jalen Wilson] almost at 34. The amount of attempts that Noah [Clowney] took. Same as Keon [Johnson].”