Jordi Fernandez’s secret to get to the heart of his players
At 17 years old, Jordi Fernandez was far from envisioning what basketball held in store for him. He just enjoyed the sport, soaked it in by coaching youth teams and playing in Montgat, a town very close to his hometown, Badalona, a small city located right next to Barcelona and the one he so proudly spoke to after leading Canada to the bronze medal in the last World Cup.
However, Fernandez already showed vehement signs of his unshakable character, of the dramatic intensity with which he expresses basketball. Fernandez, who deeply loves the traditions of his motherland, burned his left hand in what is translated as a ‘fire run’, a frantic and thrilling Catalan celebration that consists of a procession of people dressed as fire-breathing monsters and dragons led by horned devils chasing people in the streets while emitting real sparks and fire. Spectators can choose either to run away or challenge the creatures.
It turns out that the burn required a bandage. His team, Montgat, had to play against Sant Josep, one of the several clubs in Badalona, a city that exudes basketball and that saw former NBA players Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernandez grow up and debut in the professional Spanish league with Joventut, the most important club in town.
Raúl Martín, Jordi’s lifelong friend and neighbour at the time, still can’t believe what he witnessed of his partner in crime, who played point guard: “He wanted to play with a burned hand, however,” said Martín, who also was a teammate of Jordi on the Joventut youth teams.
“His hand was bandaged. The game was tied and he had to shoot free throws. He missed the first one and he got furious. He took off the bandage and threw it to the ground, and he made the second free throw,” he said.
Anything that prevents Fernandez from winning makes his blood boil. To hell with the bandage. He gave his clipboard the same treatment in a timeout surrounded by NBA stars more than 20 years later, throwing it to the ground to call out Canada’s players in the game against Letonia in the last World Cup.
“You guys want to be first? What the fuck!” Fernandez yelled at his players.
Jordi Fernandez is fire, is passion, is pure character. But he is very sensitive as well, and he cares about everybody. That might be the reason why everyone buys into his ideas and his passionate approach right away. The Canadian national team is the proof in the pudding; after he was appointed head coach after Nick Nurse’s resignation last year, a month and a half was enough for the Spaniard to win over the players to the point of making history with the first medal in a World Cup for Canada. The Canadians also qualified for the upcoming Olympics in Paris. Jordi did it without any head coaching experience other than his two-year stint with the Canton Charge, the Cavaliers’ G-League team.
Martín, who has visited Fernandez in the U.S. and Canada, several times said his phone never stops ringing between calls and text messages. But Canada’s head coach always makes time to talk to his longtime friend and keep in touch with him, no matter how overwhelmed he is.
“I talk to Jordi every week, we make a FaceTime call every two weeks. Our kids also talk to each other, they are very close friends,” Martín said.
“He got me into basketball at six years old, we used to go to practice together after school. He connects with people because he is a very transparent person, and he transmits confidence,” he said. “Besides, he listens to you. There are a lot of people who speak about themselves all the time, but what he does is listen. He is a very noble guy, humble, he never brags about anything, and he could do it. That has taken him to where he is now. When you are stuck-up, and you believe you know everything you don’t usually have that much success. All these things are very important in basketball because if a player doesn’t respect you, or doesn’t trust you, you won’t be able to take advantage of him,” Martín said.
“Success has not gone to his head, and that’s because his parents brought him up as God intended. He has always been a good guy, a good student, and a good friend. You will never find in Canyadó, our district, anyone who speaks badly of him.”
Martín has experienced the same kind of respect among NBA stars every time he has gone to the U.S. to visit Jordi, whether it was in Cleveland, Denver, or Sacramento, all the cities Fernandez has worked as an assistant coach before being named the Brooklyn Nets head coach last spring.
“Everybody respects him. I remember Kyrie Irving waved at him in Cleveland to ask him how he was. I also saw how Nikola Jokic went to him when Jordi wasn’t in Denver anymore, same as with Jamal Murray and Canada’s players, world-class players. You see when he speaks everybody listens to him. He earns respect and people love him,” he said.
Nikola Jokic fell head over heels for Fernandez last year.
“First, Jordi is a great person. I’m happy for him. He is a European coach who has developed himself as an NBA coach and has a good mindset. It’s a mix of ideas between the NBA and Europe and he comes from Spain, which has won a lot in the last few years. He can win the NBA as a head coach. Why not?” Jokic said.
“You have to be honest, try to care about people, and understand everyone’s situation. Other than that, there’s no secret, I don’t have a magic bullet, it’s a matter of working and trying to connect. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes not, sometimes you connect more or less or don’t connect. It’s a matter of spending time. Time and work are the most important things in relationships,” Fernandez said.
However, to understand the build-up of Jordi’s personality it’s necessary to go back in time and go over his unusual but fascinating journey towards the best basketball league in the world, from the lowest level to the very top.
Not tall and strong enough to become a pro
As many kids eager to play basketball in Badalona, Jordi Fernandez started playing in Joventut, the quintessential club in Spain in raising talents in a youth team structure over FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Still today, Badalona’s club is the one that brings more players to the top Spanish league, and its senior team is the one that uses the most players from youth teams in the rotation.
They became Euroleague champions in 1994 with this formula even before Barça clinched its first title in 2003 commanded by Svetislav Pesic, the current Serbian national team coach.
Enric Campos, the director of Joventut youth teams from 1979 to 1997, saw Jordi growing up in the courts. “Jordi had long hair, and he was swarthy. He played point guard and was the typical skilled player,” Campos said. “He bounced the ball very well, brought it up very well and I also remember he had a strong character,” he said.
Raúl Martín, who also played point guard, already appreciated the essence of a coach in one of his best friends: “He liked to command, you could see he could become a coach.”
Fernandez started coaching while playing. He gained experience in different clubs around Badalona and Catalonia, including Montgat, Badalonès, Sant Josep, Hospitalet, Lleida, and Sarrià. He kept playing once he began to take a Bachelor of Sports Science, and by his 20s he reached his ceiling as a player with Mollerussa, in the fourth Spanish division, still two divisions out of professional basketball. Vidal Sabater is another close friend of Jordi Fernandez and a basketball coach in Sant Josep, one of Badalona’s clubs. He coached different youth teams along with Jordi and he observed his progression as a player at the same time.
“When he started studying Sports Science he improved physically, but he wasn’t explosive. If he had been, he would have gone further,” he said.
“He bounced the ball very well, brought it up very well and I also remember he had a strong character”
Enric Campos, the former director of Joventut youth teams, about Jordi’s play style
Fernandez didn’t become a pro like another European, Darko Rajakovic, who also started coaching youth teams in Serbia in his teens. Still, like Rajakovic, he finally got to the NBA head coach position with his recent appointment in Brooklyn. The two have followed relatively similar paths, in that both are rare Europeans with top coaching jobs in the NBA.
The Catalan was devoted to basketball but had to find a way to make a living. He was way off of making one with his beloved sport, but a goal kept going through his head, Sabater said. “Jordi was very clear about going to the U.S. He is a hard worker and comes from a humble family. Besides basketball, he worked as a wedding waiter on the weekends, and he opened up a nightclub in Barcelona. He is a go-ahead guy,” he said.
Despite not having anything to do, the growth of the bar reflects the different sides of Jordi’s personality. Martín recalls Jordi was an inquisitive businessman. “He opened up the bar with two more partners. They started throwing small parties, but the parties got bigger and bigger. Jordi is very driven,” Martín said.
“Jordi was a waiter, but also the PR of the bar. He brought people and he was also good-looking, women went after him. He was a good image for the club,” he said while chuckling.
A learning experience in Amsterdam
Jordi Fernandez was busy, learning basketball and a little bit of everything. But Fernandez, who was adventurous, decided to take a first step towards living abroad by emigrating to Amsterdam for a while.
It was a very unpleasant experience at times that hit him hard, yet it shaped his character. The Spaniard, who barely spoke English at 20 years old, continued his Sports Science studies in the Netherlands capital, but his journey didn’t have anything to do with the typical fun exchange experience.
He didn’t live much life, but he survived. He washed dishes to make money, and he stayed for a while in a guest hotel that he described as “too scary” in an interview with the website Cantonrep. He didn’t even have time to think of partying in a party capital of Europe.
“Once I went through that year, I felt like I could do anything,” Fernández said in the mentioned interview. “It was the growth of that experience, having to figure things out. You don’t know how much you can learn until you push yourself to the limit,” he said.
Language was one of the barriers that Fernández broke down.
“He learned English very quickly,” Martín said. The way the actual Canada coach speaks English is another proof of how much of a perfectionist he is. He doesn’t just speak it fluently, but also with an accent that sounds much more American than the genuine Spanish one.
But, despite having lived in the U.S. for more than a decade and having an American wife, he still speaks Catalan at home every day. “He tells his two kids everything in Catalan,” Martín said.
“Both of them understand it and one of them already speaks it,” Fernandez’s friend said.
Fernandez, strongly driven by his passion and curiosity, expressed his basketball addiction in the academic circle with the publication of a journal named ‘Identifying and Analyzing the Construction and Effectiveness of Offensive plays in Basketball by using systematic observation.’
As a person who cares about the emotional side of sports, he also has a PhD in Sports Psychology.
A first taste of the U.S.
Ahead of the 2006 summer and at 23 years old, Fernandez started to get carried away by the itch of experiencing basketball in the U.S. firsthand. Back then, the Catalan was conducting individual workouts for Rudy Fernandez, who put him in touch with Joe Abunassar, the founder of the Impact Basketball Academy in Las Vegas. He started working in player development with college and NBA players, including Baron Davis and former Raptor and NBA champion Serge Ibaka.
From 2006 to 2009, spending the summers in Las Vegas was what Fernandez’s vacations were about, having to pay out of his pocket for the flights after saving up all year.
Then in 2009 he got the call.
Mike Brown, the NBA Coach of the Year and coaching the LeBron-led Cavaliers at the time, was on the other end. He was captivated by the intensity, passion, and attention to detail that Jordi exuded when working in Las Vegas with his son, Elijah Brown, and he wanted to see him in training camp.
Mike Brown was intrigued by Fernandez to the point he paid for his flight, as the Catalan couldn’t afford to get a ticket. It was the much-awaited journey of no return for the Badalona native. According to what Joe Vardon said in The Athletic, Fernández made a quick impression on the big fish Danny Ferry, the General Manager of the Cavaliers back then.
The way Jordi was working with Danny Green caught the eye of Ferry, looking through the window of his office. He almost knocked down the door of Brown’s office to tell him Fernandez was going to be hired right away.
Even the greatest need to be given an opportunity, and Mike Brown was the person who bet on Jordi Fernandez.
The Catalan spent a seven-year tenure in Cleveland until 2016, playing different roles in player development by working with elite stars Kyrie Irving and LeBron James, scouting, and game planning. He also coached the Canton Charge, the Cavaliers’s affiliate G-League team between 2014 and 2016. It was his first experience as a head coach, and he led the team to the semifinals both seasons.
Fernandez finished his story in Cleveland as a part of the coaching staff commanded by Tyronn Lue that led the Cavaliers to win the championship in 2016 against the Warriors in fairytale fashion, coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals.
Pep Guardiola attended the Finals to support Fernandez, a friend of Manchester City’s coach. Canada’s coach said he learns from Guardiola in terms of leadership.
Despite the success, all that glittered wasn’t gold for the Catalan despite such a happy ending in Cleveland, and getting hired by the Denver Nuggets, where he spent the next six years as an assistant coach until 2022. What looks like a meteoric rise from the outside can be a struggle when you’re living it.
His close friend Sabater gets into the details of the uncertainty and the struggles Fernandez had to cope with behind the scenes: “He has had hard moments in the NBA. He shared a flat with other coaches in Cleveland and found his place there little by little, but he didn’t know if he would stay. In his second year in Denver, there was a point when he got relegated to a lower position because another coach was put in his place. But he showed his character and kept working hard.”
“Jordi connects so well to people. I’m not even close, he is way better than me. His connection and personality and all that other stuff are off the charts, and I learned a lot just listening to him”
Mike Brown, Sacramento Kings’ head coach
Fernandez established a deep relationship in Denver with Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, whose improvement as a defender has much to do with the time the Catalan spent with the Nuggets. He also became a very close friend of former Raptor Juancho Hernangomez, who is the godfather of Fernandez’s two kids.
Brown offered him a higher position in Sacramento in 2022 as his associate assistant coach, and Fernandez accepted. The Catalan helped him get the Kings back to the playoffs in the 2022-2023 year after 17 years with no appearances in the postseason.
The two-time NBA Coach of the Year was impressed by Fernandez’s capability of building relationships with the players.
“Jordi connects so well to people. I’m not even close, he is way better than me. His connection and personality and all that other stuff are off the charts, and I learned a lot just listening to him,” Brown said.
The start of Jordi’s story with Canada
It was in Sacramento where the suggestive and premonitory chain of events began that led him to build ties with Canada.
The first one was extravagant. In a Kings vs Raptors game in Toronto on Dec. 15, 2022, Mike Brown was irate with the referee and jumped onto the court down the stretch in the third quarter. He was thrown out of the game. Fernandez took over and Sacramento ended up winning by one point. The players soaked him with champagne in the locker room while he started to make headlines in Spain, as he became the first coach born in Spain to be an NBA head coach, even if just for part of one game.
He made the final cut for interviews alongside former Raptors assistant coach Sergio Scariolo and Darko Rajakovic to become Toronto’s head coach after Nick Nurse’s exit in June 2023.
But fate sometimes offers different paths to end up in the same destination. Fernandez didn’t get the Raptors head coaching job, but he did fill the other position Nurse vacated. Nurse stepped down as Canada’s men’s coach but had a lot of weight in Canada Basketball’s final decision to hire Fernandez.
Celebrating Jordi's first W!
— Sacramento Kings (@SacramentoKings) December 15, 2022#BeamTeam | #SacramentoProud pic.twitter.com/vfTc3JIGwg
“It’s fate,” the Spaniard said in an informal conversation, offering his thoughts about his special connection with the country.
Then with the Badalona native taking his second job as a head coach, his personality took the spotlight. His personality and empathy dazzled everybody in the national team right off the bat. Literally everybody, as Canada’s Team Manager James DePoe said.
“It’s his demeanour, his personality, how he approaches coaching. He knew he would coach the team just one month before (the World Cup) and he made a point of establishing a relationship with everybody, not just the players. He wanted to know everybody in the group, and that helped everybody to feel we are all together,” said DePoe, working for Canada Basketball since 2010.
“When you are lacking any technical execution you can make up for it when you feel really together,” DePoe emphasizes.
Jordi Fernandez had a valuable FIBA background that included having worked as an assistant coach for the Spanish national team under Sergio Scariolo. But chemistry was what made the biggest difference for Canada to clinch the bronze medal, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said.
“It’s hard to take over a group of players who already know each other. He did a great job connecting with the guys and earning our trust, that’s why he got success,” the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard said.
Rowan Barrett, Senior Men’s National Team General Manager, believes the long and diverse journey of Fernandez to the NBA is one of the keys to understanding his ability to put himself in the players’ shoes.
“He comes from the ground up. He worked in player development on the court, sweating with the guys. He understands they want to get better and how to get them better. But, obviously, he has been an assistant coach, he understands all the different things they go through and that helps him to communicate,” Barrett said.
Dillon Brooks, the paradigm of Jordi’s emotional intelligence
By the time media attention reached the team during training camp in Toronto last year in the lead-up to the 2023 FIBA World Cup, Jordi Fernandez had already won everybody over. He praised all the players but gave more flowers to one in particular.
“I’ve always thought Dillon Brooks is a player I’d like to coach. He is very competitive, very physical, and after having been in touch for one month and having been with him three days I’d like to coach him for the rest of my life, and I tell you everything with that,” he said.
“He is a competitor and this team needs a Dillon Brooks without a doubt.”
The Spaniard showcased his emotional intelligence with the players by understanding there was one who might need more affection.
Brooks was coming off a very tough season when somehow his villain character seemed to eat the rest of his personality. He took the trash talk and his evil arts too far in the playoffs by daring to poke LeBron James in a harsh and spicy duel that resulted in the elimination of Memphis in the first round. The disappointing ending for a 2nd-seeded team in the Western Conference, along with a poor performance on the offensive end, led Brooks to be bashed by American media, which seemed to use the Mississauga native as the scapegoat.
Whether the narrative had an impact or not, the Grizzlies decided not to extend Brooks, adding the cruel nuance of saying they were not willing to do it “under any circumstances.” Brooks may have had negative moments, but he was a crucial leader and competitor for the team. Now it no longer wanted him.
But after signing a four-year contract with the Rockets, Brooks found the light with Jordi, and he made clear how he liked him the very first time he talked about Canada’s new coach.
“Jordi is a funny guy, he likes joking around, he makes us understand things and his philosophy is great,” the forward said. His reputation would soon return to a stellar status after his performance with Team Canada.
The special trip to Spain — and the final one
Canada stopped by Spain as a part of its preparation for the World Cup, and the national team played two friendlies against Spain and Argentina in Granada. Fernández promoted the joy in the team by getting them into the charms of his home country.
“We had a good time,” DePoe said. “Players loved the food, and the meals were incredible. We went to a restaurant that overlooked La Alhambra and had a tour there, it was an incredible experience.”
But there was a specific moment that defined how much Jordi cares about the well-being of his players.
“Our flight to leave Granada got delayed. But Jordi knew somebody, and they opened the restaurant for us. The players had some fun there, Jordi was really good for the players to not get bored,” Canada’s Team Manager said.
“When facing adversity, you can have moments with your teammates when you can rely on each other, and speak to each other. All these things contributed to that,” DePoe said.
However, sometimes Jordi Fernandez has to play the bad cop. He doesn’t hesitate. He has the human touch of American coaches but also has the temper typical of European coaches when needed. While the moment of throwing the clipboard to the ground against Letonia was more impactful at first sight, his speech calling out the players after the loss against Brazil resounded. The defeat endangered the qualification of Canada for the quarter final and Fernandez didn’t hold back at all.
“Shai has to score, defend, and playmake. And he didn’t,” said Fernandez of the Oklahoma City Thunder star. Kelly has to playmake, rebound, and score efficiently, and he didn’t. RJ has to run the floor, score efficiently, and defend, and he didn’t. And so, Dillon has to defend without fouling, and he didn’t,” he said.
The Spaniard, in an apocalyptic fashion, also threw himself under the bus. “I can go down the line of the things that we didn’t do as a team, me included. I could have called timeout, I could have set up a play in a different way,” he said.
Such passion stunned everybody, even veterans like Luguentz Dort.
“He is really intense,” the Thunder’s shooting guard said. “He is a coach who gets us going before the game and in practice. The way he motivated us to prepare us and go out there and compete. It was insane.”
While it’s rare that a coach talks to NBA players in these terms, Fernández has earned the right to do so, explains David Blatt, a consultant for the Canadian national team.
“Unlike in the past, when coaches asked for respect, coaches like Jordi earn the respect from players. He shows them that is not just about your basketball knowledge, but also with the ability to communicate, tailored to the modern player. They want to play for him,” said Blatt, who first met Fernandez in his stint as head coach in Cleveland.
“He worked in player development on the court, sweating with the guys.”
Rowan Barrett
“He presents things to the players in a very clear way. They have the opportunity to say if they are willing to do it or not, which is very important because the coach can make the decision easily. Jordi says what he wants from them and they come to an agreement. It’s a very healthy relationship that is about responsibility and humanity, about making them understand things. And he is not afraid of making them accountable. If something is not good, he understands the other side of things,” Blatt said.
“He is a person willing to learn from other people, he is open-minded, he is not afraid of asking and considering what other people think,” said Blatt, who was broad experience overseas and who Jordi considers his “angel.”
Fernandez’s formula worked out and is expected to work out ahead of the Olympics. Canada clinched the bronze medal. And Dillon Brooks became the particular gold for the Catalan coach.
After being rejected by the team he helped build, the Mississauga native bounced back in the World Cup, turning lemons into lemonade. Brooks culminated his redemption by becoming a heroic villain with his 39 points in the bronze medal game against the U.S. It was perhaps the single most important one-game performance in men’s basketball in Canada’s history. He proclaimed his redemption.
“I’m the best perimeter defender in the world,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fernandez proudly vindicated his roots in an emotional statement from the bottom of his heart. “I’ve been in the NBA for 15 years, but I was born and raised in a city outside Barcelona, the name of my city is Badalona. And I don’t know if you know guys, but it’s one of the best basketball cities in the world. There are a lot of good players and coaches from my city and I lived there until I was 26 years old when I went to the NBA,” he said.
When Fernandez talks to his friends, he won’t want to talk about anything but Badalona, Sabater said. “He cares about you. When he comes to Badalona he only wants to spend time with his friends. And even if you go to the U.S. to visit him, don’t ask them about the system he used to try to beat the Warriors, he only wants to talk about friends,” he said.
“He is a very approachable person. That’s why in the NBA, where players are from everywhere and they feel unrooted, he has had very close relationships with players such as Juancho Hernangomez or Jokic. He transmitted something other than being in practice to them, he also cares about their families,” Sabater said.
Jordi Fernandez has always known what those around him need, like Dillon Brooks, and he has always known how to deliver it. He gets to the heart of everybody largely because he has always known what he wanted, but he has never forgotten where he comes from. The secret of his successful formula is simple: family and Badalona first.
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