From Barcelona to Paris to Brooklyn, Jordi Fernández has grinded for his basketball life (2024)

TORONTO and LAS VEGAS — It was the spring of 2007 and Joe Abunassar needed to find a pool. It was Jordi Fernández’s job to find him one.

Abunassar has been training talented basketball players since 1997 when he founded what would become IMPACT Basketball, and he has been racing in Ironman-distance triathlons for nearly as long. The race starts with a 2.4-mile swim, so you need to maintain your rhythm and endurance in the water during training.

Back then, Fernández was a 24-year-old local coach who Andy Miller’s ASM Sports had paired with Abunassar to help train Rudy Fernández (no relation) in Barcelona in advance of the NBA Draft. Abunassar was to work with the player for two weeks, installing a training routine, and Fernández would make sure the plan was carried out after Abunassar left Spain.

Jordi Fernández would be some combination of Abunassar’s assistant and fixer. Part of the job description, it turned out, was getting Abunassar to a pool befitting his extracurricular pursuit. Fernández was driving around Barcelona, Abunassar in the passenger seat, speaking on the phone in Spanish as he tried to nail down the directions. When they arrived, Abunassar saw what he classified as a “high-level Olympic competition pool.”

Abunassar got in the water and completed lap after lap after lap.

“I’ll never forget: I actually felt bad when I was done,” Abunassar recalled. “(Fernández) sat there for an hour … “This guy went above and beyond so I could get my swim in, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively unimportant. But those are the kinds of things that Jordi does.”

Instead of professional trainers, Fernández will now be looking out for professional basketball players — specifically, the players of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the Canadian men’s national team at the Olympics. The Nets hired Fernández in April to be their next head coach. And Abunassar sees that same mindset immediately helping him in the role.

“He knew what was important for me,” he said. “He’s gonna do those same sorts of things for (players).”

Like the Toronto Raptors’ Darko Rajaković a year ago, Fernández is a 40-something first-time head coach who started his path working at lower levels in Europe before making an unlikely connection that took him to the United States and, ultimately, the NBA. Whereas Rajaković began his NBA-adjacent career by zipping through Belgrade to his then-girlfriend’s house to write up international prospect reviews for the San Antonio Spurs, Fernández interned at IMPACT before becoming the AAU coach of Elijah Brown, son of NBA coach Mike Brown. He later earned a role as a developmental coach with Brown’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Despite not playing at a high level, Fernández earned this role quickly by mastering not only the intricacies of modern basketball but also by displaying elite interpersonal skills. During the Sacramento Kings’ visit to Toronto in March, Brown — now the coach of the Kings — said Fernández is “way better than me” at connecting with people.

“Am I very good at it? I don’t know. I cannot tell you because I’m myself, but I try because I think it’s important,” Fernández told The Athletic earlier this month. “Sometimes when you have the relationship, especially in the tough moments, is when you can break through and be successful. Otherwise, if you don’t have that relationship, then it’s tough. So you try to build it.”

Before Brooklyn fully gets Fernández, though, the 41-year-old is off to France to coach Canada. The medal contender is in the Olympic tournament for the first time since 2000 after Fernández took over the team following Nick Nurse’s abrupt departure last summer and directed it to the bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup.

The two jobs are virtual opposites, even if they both have him swimming in deep waters.

In Brooklyn, Fernández is taking over a team that has the long view in mind, as confirmed by the recent trade of star two-way wing Mikal Bridges. They will be in the derby for projected 2025 No. 1 NBA Draft pick Cooper Flagg.

With Canada, Fernández is leading a team largely picked by Nurse and general manager Rowan Barrett. NBA MVP runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray, the second-best player on the 2023 NBA champion Denver Nuggets, are the on-court leaders, along with experienced program and veterans such as Kelly Olynyk and Dwight Powell. In contrast to the Nets playing the long game, Canada has to master every possession-matters basketball in a short, difficult tournament.

For Fernández, it should only deepen the smarts that have had him on this track longer than his age would indicate.

“It was a home-run hire (for Canada). … Sometimes in the national team game, less is more,” said Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch, who coached the British national team at the 2012 Olympics and worked on the Nuggets staff with Fernández in 2016-17. “And I think he’s got great emotional intelligence to figure that out.”

Fernández leaned against a padded wall in the OVO Athletic Centre, the Raptors’ practice facility, and also, for more than a week spanning June and July, the Canadian team’s home base. In six days, his team was set to play the United States in a pre-Olympic tune-up, the type of best-on-best match Canadian basketball fans have been thinking about for more than a decade.

Canada’s Olympic entry will feature 10 current NBA players, the most that any non-U.S. team has ever sent to a major international tournament. It might have been more if not for the late withdrawals of Golden State Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins and Memphis Grizzlies rookie Zach Edey.

Expectations are high.

Fernández’s coaching journey hasn’t always been so glamorous. Hell — sometimes he had to stray away from basketball. Part of his degree in sports sciences involved spending semesters in Norway and The Netherlands teaching team sports beyond only basketball at universities. Fernández knew this was the route he had to take, collecting any experience he could. By 15, he had started coaching youth teams in Spain, despite continuing to play semi-professionally until he was 19.

“I liked to organize people and use my voice,” Fernández said. He was, of course, a 6-foot-1 point guard. “I was very happy with my playing career. I enjoyed it. I worked to get better. And then it got to a point that to be involved in a very, very competitive way, it was (going to be) through coaching. … Playing also made me not just fall in love but also feel the game in a different way.”

After working with Rudy Fernández in 2007, Jordi Fernández asked Abunassar to come to work for him at IMPACT in Las Vegas. According to Abunassar, Fernández was a glorified intern, rebounding for trainees, helping clean up the gym and more. He bounced around from hotels to apartments with roommates during his time there.

In the spring of 2008, Abunassar worked with another Spanish NBA Draft prospect, Serge Ibaka. Again, Fernández assisted. That work caught the attention of another luminary on the international scene.

“I think Jordi has the personality to lead groups with a high level of ego,” said Sergio Scariolo, whose Spanish national team is in the same group as Canada at the Olympics. Scariolo hired Fernández as an assistant with Spain in 2017. “First of all, because he knows how to handle his ego, and that’s always the starting point when you try to demand other people in your group to keep their own egos under control. …

“He has a flexibility which is definitely quite disciplined and organized on the floor. At the same time, (he is) a very easy guy to deal with and get along with on the floor. His personality, since he was much younger than this, was always showing up the most.”

“I grew up watching them play,” Fernández said of the so-called Spanish golden-age teams that medaled in three straight Olympics from 2008-16, won four EuroBasket titles in six tournaments over 13 years and, finally, won a global tournament at the 2019 World Cup.

Fernández was an assistant on that team: “(I was) pretty much a similar age with (many of the players). And then I got to coach them. And for me, they were role models — from Sergio to the Spanish federation to the players.”

Unlike Finch and Nurse — two American-born-and-raised coaches who never played in the NBA, going to Europe to get their first significant coaching opportunities — Fernández got his hands-on training in the U.S. Brown’s initial offer led him to his first role with the Cavaliers, which included a stint as the head coach with the then-Canton Charge of the G League (formerly known as the D-League).

Fernández stayed in Cleveland through three head coaching changes, including Brown’s firing, re-hiring and subsequent firing. With the Cavaliers, Fernández interacted with more coaches who would either circle his life or help change it: David Blatt and Michael Malone.

When Malone, a former Cavs assistant, took over the Nuggets, he hired Fernández to his staff. Fernández was in Denver for six years, as he went from the developmental side (Finch credited him for his work with Murray in the Canadian’s rookie season) to a front-row assistant. Finch and Fernández bonded over their inverse paths. Blatt, another American who made his name as a coach overseas, appreciated what Fernández brought to the table, too, even if Fernández played a smaller role on Blatt’s Cavaliers teams.

“I like to say I’m not very good at many things, but I am great at one thing, and that’s judging character,” Blatt said. “I remember distinctly thinking that he had great character.

“He was a guy that was a really good communicator, really good listener and he had a level of humanity to him that was, at least to me, obvious and noticeable. … He sort of had it, you know? You could just feel it.”

As was the case with Rajaković, Fernández’s biggest wins came on a one-on-one level.

Trey Lyles, who has worked with Fernández in Denver, Sacramento and with the Canadian team, remembered the two bonding over vinyl records. Fernández and Lyles share a passion for the music of Prince and Michael Jackson and would exchange notes over dinner at Fernández’s home.

When Fernández was working with Brown’s son’s AAU team, it was Danny Green, then trying to cement his spot in the league, who told Brown that the young coach had the goods to be around an NBA team, not merely some aspirant tweens. Fernández seems to have the ability to befriend a player but also hold them accountable. Notably, he holds himself accountable.

In the run-up to the Olympics, Fernández has repeatedly spoken about Canada needing to improve defensively, saying part of their relative struggles on that end at the World Cup came because he pushed his best players too hard during the tournament.

“In practice you see staff, when they mess up, they’re doing pushups,” said Trae Bell-Haynes, a member of last year’s Canadian team and a late cut for the Olympic team. “So I think it’s easy to play for a coach like that when they practise what they preach, they follow through on what they say.”

Melvin Ejim, a former second-team All-American at Iowa State who has had a long career overseas and has been a staple of the Canadian team over the past decade, said Fernández’s journey is relatable to players like him.

“I think that his drive and his mentality has really helped him in his life,” Ejim said. “And I hope that as I continue mine, I can take and pull from some of those experiences that he has.”

The question is whether it will resonate at the highest level, in the highest position.

The Nets will not have overwhelming talent this season, but they won’t be content to lose forever. Based on this offseason’s hires, there are no clear patterns with NBA head coaching. There was a recent player (JJ Redick), a few experienced head coaches (Mike Budenholzer, Kenny Atkinson, J.B. Bickerstaff) and longtime assistants getting their first full-time jobs (Charles Lee, Brian Keefe and Fernández.)

As ever, the league isn’t displaying much consistency in what constitutes the right candidate. With all that Fernández has done, though, it is hard to count him out for any reason.

“It’s building credibility,” Abunnassar said of Fernández’s breadth of experiences. “Chauncey (Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers) is going to the Hall of Fame in September, so when he tells Scoot Henderson or Anfernee Simons or Shaedon Sharpe what to do, the command and the respect is there. Not that it shouldn’t be for Jordi and Darko, but their grinding has absolutely gained them the credibility.”

As Finch added: “It just gives you a complete view of the way the game can be played — and can be played differently.”

After a disappointing loss to Brazil in the second round of last summer’s World Cup, Canada needed a win over Spain to earn an automatic berth in the Olympics. With a win, Canada was heading to France. Lose and Canada would be in another last-chance qualification tournament, just like in 2021.

Spain was the top-ranked team in the world at that point, while Canada was 15th. Conversely, Canada played seven NBA players that night while Spain played two — the unheralded Santi Aldama and Usman Garuba.

Still, this was the sort of game Canada had lost in the past. Defeats to Venezuela at the 2015 FIBA Americas and Czechia in a qualifier jumped to mind.

Scariolo considered his team the underdog, given the perceived talent disparity. Spain took a 12-point lead into the fourth quarter. Like Canada, without a win, Spain would have to qualify in the summer of 2024, guaranteed of not finishing in the top two among European teams at the World Cup. Both teams were desperate.

“Our hope was that at some point the favourite team would choke and have the bad feeling of not being able to close the game,” Scariolo said. “We were biting their heels or staying even or ahead. But every time I watched their bench, I was looking at them, and (Fernández) seemed totally in control.

“In other situations, similar situations, you might see the coach panicking a little bit because he can’t find the solution to win the game, which is highly expected for the higher-level team. In this case, every time I was looking at Jordi, he was in full focus and control. He was not giving any sign of pressure.

“That was bad feedback for me.”

Talent won out. Dillon Brooks and Gilgeous-Alexander made huge plays down the stretch, and Canada ended its Olympic drought. At that point, it had been just seven weeks since Fernández took over from Nurse, who stepped away from the team after the Raptors fired him and he took a new job with the Philadelphia 76ers.

In trying to find a replacement, Blatt, serving as an adviser to Barrett, had put forward a list of names. The list included Fernández, although Blatt believes Fernández was on Barrett’s initial list, too.

Fernández served as an assistant to Brown with the Nigerian team at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. Aside from the Las Vegas Summer League, Fernández hadn’t been a head coach since 2016 with Canton.

As Nurse and Barrett had asked for a three-summer commitment following the disappointment of 2021, a core of players had gained experience playing together for Canada. Fernández also kept the bulk of Nurse’s staff in place to maintain as much continuity as possible, which the program had lacked in the past.

You need a leader, though.

“He gives you the opportunity to take advantage of your skill sets,” said Ejim, one of the two non-NBA players who will be on the Canadian team. “And he puts guys in the right places. And ultimately, he’s one of those guys you feel is always in your corner. Whether you’re having a good practice, bad practice, he’s an uplifter.”

Added Scariolo: “I think Jordi was smart because he got the advantage of what Nick had done during the previous few years. With his personal touch and with his character, personality, knowledge, experiences, he definitely added the cherry on the cake. But it was a big cherry.”

In France, Canada will play Greece, Australia and Spain. At first glance, it is the toughest of the three groups. The FIBA World Rankings are an imperfect measure, but the group features the second-, fifth-, seventh- and 14th-ranked teams in the world. The “gimme” is a game against a team with Giannis Antetokounmpo.

To prepare, Canada went to Las Vegas to play a pre-tournament game against the U.S., before departing for France to play the Olympic hosts and Puerto Rico. Leading into the game against the U.S., Abunassar visited a Canadian practice. There was supposed to be an intrasquad scrimmage, but it ended up being canceled because of a slick floor.

“If I had a broom, I’d clean it right now,” Fernández said, according to Abunassar. “That’s what I used to do at Joe’s place.”

(Top photo: Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP via Getty Images)