Jordi Fernandez gets the Steve Serby treatment: the lengthy interview that examines everything from childhood to future plans.
Jordi Fernandez admits he’s still a work in progress. For all accomplishments, an Olympic coach with teams from three different continents, assistant coaching jobs on three winning teams, and now, the head coaching gig in Brooklyn, he says he understands that the world he’s chosen is cut throat and there’s always going to be pressure.
“This is a very competitive country. In this country it feels like if you get fired you don’t get paid. In Spain, it’s like if you work for a company and then you get unemployment. Right here it’s like cutthroat,” he told Steve Serby in one of the Post writer’s patented lengthy interviews, referring to a difference between his native Spain and the U.S.
“It’s like you have a job, everybody wants your job, you always have to be better and better and better and better. Be better than the other, be better than the other, The NBA it feels like it’s times a hundred, or a thousand, because there’s only 30 jobs in the world, right? There’s only 30 teams. Video coordinators, there’s 30, assistant video coordinators, there’s 30.”
But the 41-year-old is a survivor. That comes across in the interview as does his ambition. You don’t go from stacking store shelves, working in a factory or washing dishes to help pay for your college education to becoming an NBA head coach without it. In fact, he does not mince words when he talks about it. He doesn’t want to win just one championship.
“It drives me to take the next step, to never stay in the same place, to always see what’s next,” he said.
“The absolutely best thing that I can picture myself is like winning NBA championship, but then have the opportunity to have a group that can win more than one, because those are very special things. … What I was telling you before, like what’s the next step, right? I’m a head coach, well I want to be a head coach for many years, then how do I do it? We build a winning program, we make it to the playoffs, we keep growing … a long process where I can feel like it’s not over.”
How does he do it, indeed. In one long back-and-forth with Serby, Fernandez describes his coaching style, indeed his leadership style: a collective approach is fine, but someone has to be in charge.
“I think try to organize everybody. Give everybody responsibility. And then accountability,” he said. “So collaboration, for me, it’s important. You need somebody that organizes everybody, because if you ask everybody, “Oh, what should we do?’” … collective thinking takes forever. So let’s reorganize first, then I’ll give you your part of it. It’s like we’re all trying to do this together, this is your job. And then if you do it, I can tell you, you did a great job. If you’re not doing it, I can tell you, you got to do better. I think being collaborative is very important. But at some point, somebody has to put everything in place.”
The philosophy has been reflected in both his relationships with players and assistant coaches who Fernandez has given the opportunity to draw up (winning) plays at the end of games. He also told Serby he’s not a big believer in too many rules because too many devalue the idea of rules altogether. Instead, he goes by three basic ones.
“If we start with three very basic rules of being on time, having positive energy and being the best leader you can be, those are very simple rules,” he said. “Threes are easy to remember — like, if we go by our culture, it’s get 1 percent better every day … embrace your role … and build relationships, it’s three. What this culture creates, an identity — be competitive, be selfless, be connected. Those three things in a culture create these three things of your identity.”
As for the identity and culture he’s trying to create, it’s simple, he said.
“A winning culture means that you want to have success in the long run. The most important thing about winning, it’s earning respect,” he emphasized. “In whatever field you are, you have competition, and if everybody can see that you do a good job, if they can respect your job and acknowledge your job, that to me is the definition of a winning culture.”
He also described what he means by mental toughness, something he often talks about.
“[M]issing a shot or missing two shots and then shooting the next one, that’s part of mental toughness,” he noted.
There can be pitfalls along the way when you’re losing, he admitted, when the goal seems far away and when not everyone is at the same point in the overall journey.
“Once you paint the picture of what we all want, we will be on different parts of the journey. And sometimes you’ll feel you’re closer, or you’re far, and then you have to pick those moments to keep everybody engaged, and that’s motivation, right?” he told Serby. “Where we’re right now, don’t lose focus. Sometimes it feels so far away that you can be disengaged. Can you find like a short-term goal or a mid-term goal?”
It shouldn’t be any surprise that Fernandez is just short of his Ph.D in sports psychology. His ability to develop relationships up, down and sideways along the management chain has always been seen as his biggest asset. He told Serby that because English is not his first language — he didn’t learn it till he was in his 20’s — that “I give it more thought to be clear with my explanation.”
As for pressure, Fernandez said he enjoys the “good pressure” the game brings.
“Pressure is part of the job, and even though we all feel pressure, you can take it as an exciting thing, because if your nature is to be competitive, I’ve always enjoyed that pressure. Going into a game and you have to win it, I don’t feel like I’m freaking out. I’ve coached in a World Cup or in the Olympics, and I’ve coached elimination games. And yes, it’s stressful and you feel like a good pressure, but nothing that I would be like that it’s painful to go through.”
Serby also talks at length about his family and how they have impacted his career and how much he misses those back in Badalona, the Barcelona suburb where he grew up and learned the sport and the Catalonian cuisine from his now 94-year-old grandmother.
He also admitted his greatest moment in basketball came in the bronze medal game of the FIBA World Cup in Manila two years ago when his Team Canada beat the U.S.A. “We got the first medal in a World Cup for Canadian basketball.”
Fernandez says he hasn’t get decided whether to continue his tenure as head coach of Team Canada which ends this year. “Right now my commitment it’s up until this year, and then we need to have conversations.”
Then, there’s the rapid-fire Q. and A. familiar to any reader of Serby profiles: favorite player (Drazen Petrovic,) favorite coach (Phil Jackson,) three dream dinner companions ( Freddy Mercury, Amy Winehouse, Prince,) Favorite entertainer/singer? (Oasis) etc., etc.
Finally, Serby asked Fernandez about his message to Brooklyn Nets fans.
“That we’ll try to represent the grit, the Brooklyn grit, and I hope that everybody’s proud of the team. It’s not always going to be perfect, but the intentions will always be there. I hope that they can enjoy how the team plays and how they fight, no matter if it’s the game that we’re going to win or we’re going to lose.”
- Jordi Fernandez navigating transition from Spain to ‘cutthroat’ NBA helped shape his Nets vision – Steve Serby – New York Post