Passion and a relentless drive: Jordi Fernandez’s formula for success
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Toni Rojas of Raptors Republic profiles Jordi Fernandez through the eyes of those who’ve known him longest, his friends from Badalona, Spain. Raul Martin knows about Jordi Fernandez’s passion. The two grew up together in Badalona, near Barcelona. They were teammates in the city’s youth teams going back to when they were 10 years old, neighbors too.
When asked to talk about what it was like to play with the Brooklyn Nets new head coach back then, Martin told Raptors Republic, a Toronto blog, about an incident when the two were 17 and facing a big game. Fernandez had burned his hand during a “fire run” in a local Catalan festival and needed to wear a bandage while playing point guard.
“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.
A lot of the talk around Fernandez since he was signed in April has been about his ability to relate to everyone, about his detail-oriented approach to the game. For Martin, who says he texts with his old friend all the time and facetimes with him every couple of weeks, Fernandez is not just a sports psychologist (one class short of a doctorate) or a basketball technocrat. He is about infectious passion ... and drive. There is no wasted effort. It’s all about a master plan which has now reached being head coach of both an NBA team and a national team with a chance at an Olympic medal.
Toni Rojas, who interviewed a number of Fernandez’s long-time friends and NBA types for an extensive profile, details that drive whether it’s playing through pain at age 17 or deciding in his 20s that he needed not just to learn English but to be fluent in it if he was going to make it to the NBA or getting everyone to understand that they had better match his passion if they’re going to succeed.
One piece of video from last year’s FIBA World Cup is an exemplar of both his passion and preparation. Canada was down 10 early to Lithuania and he wanted to let his players know what he thought of their effort, throwing his clipboard to the floor, then lecturing his group of mostly NBA players...
Jordi Fernandez in timeouts is legitimately hilarious. “You guys want to be first? What the fuck!” Canada has a good one. pic.twitter.com/FO0BkvoCu0— Faizal Khamisa (@FaizalKhamisa) August 29, 2023
Canada won that game and went on to win the bronze, Canada’s first medal in decades.
The passion and drive, plus an ability to connect has gained players’ respect, Martin told Rojas. A lot of different players.
“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,” Martin said.
Rojas also provides detail on his academic journey, how he first got a bachelor in sports science, then pursued his doctorate while waiting on tables in Barcelona, washing dishes in Amsterdam and ultimately co-authoring an article in the Journal of Behavior Research Methods entitled, “Identifying and Analyzing the Construction and Effectiveness of Offensive plays in Basketball by using systematic observation.” Serious stuff.
The profile also gets into how Fernandez first made his mark in the U.S. working with Baron Davis and Serge Ibaka at the Impact Basketball Academy in Las Vegas. Rojas notes that from 2006 to 2009, Fernandez spent his summer vacations in Las Vegas, “having to pay out of his pocket for the flights after saving up all year.”
One of the younger players Fernandez worked with in Vegas was Elijah Brown whose father was Mike Brown, then head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers who had noticed Fernandez’s intensity, passion, and attention to detail in dealing with his son, as Rojas writes. Brown paid his way to Cleveland for a job interview because Fernandez couldn’t afford it.
Brown hired him in Cleveland and Fernandez was ultimately part of the 2016 NBA championship team, by then coached by Ty Lue. Then came gigs in Denver and Sacramento where he rejoined Brown. He also served as an assistant to Brown when Brown coached the Nigerian national team in the 2020 Olympics. All of it led to his current jobs with Brooklyn and Team Canada.
There’s a lot more in Rojas profile including his relationships with Jokic whose improvement on defense is attributed to Fernandez, Jamal Murray who he’s now coached in Denver and on Team Canada and most particularly, Dillion Brooks.
Not of all his experiences along the way have been positive, even in the NBA. Rojas quotes another friend of Fernandez, Vidal Sabater, on a couple of them.
“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.”
For Martin, what Fernandez is now is the product of a lot of his experiences, the positive ones as well as the humbling ones.
“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.
Fernandez will be in Paris through the middle of August, then he’ll be in Brooklyn with a roster that will no doubt be different than it is now and in a “little bit of rebuilding” as Sean Marks told ESPN the other night. But it’s not likely to faze him or dampen his passion.
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