Jordi Fernandez: 3 things to know about Brooklyn Nets new head coach
The Brooklyn Nets have hired Jordi Fernandez as the team's new head coach, the organization announced Monday.
“We’re thrilled to announce Jordi Fernández as Brooklyn’s new head coach,” said Nets GM Sean Marks said in a team statement.
“As we progressed through an extensive search over the past six weeks, it became increasingly clear that Jordi is the best coach to lead our team forward. Jordi brings a diverse set of experiences and basketball knowledge gained over the course of a coaching career that has taken him around the world."
Here are three things to know about Brooklyn's new head coach:
Jordi Fernandez is first Spanish-born NBA head coach
Once the 2024-25 season begins, Fernandez, 41, will make NBA history as the first Spanish-born head coach.
Before joining the Nets, the Badalona, Spain, native spent the prior two seasons as Sacramento Kings associate head coach and was an assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets from 2016-22.
Fernandez got his start in the NBA as a players development coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers for four seasons from 2009-13.
Has multiple international roots
Fernandez started coaching at the young age of 15 in his home country of Spain and was an assistant coach for the Spain Under-19 team in 2013.
From 2017-19, he was an assistant coach for the Spanish men's national team and was also an assistant for the Nigeria national team during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo under current Kings head coach Mike Brown.
It doesn't stop there as Fernandez is currently the head coach for Canada's men's national basketball team.
He led Canada to a bronze medal at the 2023 FIBA World Cup held in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.
Jordi Fernandez has a PhD in sports psychology
Perhaps the most interesting about Fernandez doesn't have to do with the basketball court.
The Nets' new leader has a PhD in sports psychology from the University of Barcelona.
"The aim of this communication is to detect the patterns which enable us to understand the behavior of the basketball plays that have been designed by the coaches, and to conduct a microanalysis of this context giving them different solutions to change the systems and make them more effective," Fernandez wrote on his LinkedIn page.
He can also speak up to four languages, including English and Dutch, and is bilingual in both Spanish and Catalan.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Jordi Fernandez: 3 things to know about new Brooklyn Nets head coach
