New coach Jordi Fernandez takes a timeout for some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby.
Q: Have you gotten an early read on what a rivalry with the Knicks could become?
A: I think rivalries are amazing, and the one thing is as long as it’s with respect. You always have to be able to shake hands to be kind and polite to each other, but if you can beat them by 40, better than by 20. And they should feel the same way about us.
Q: Could you envision one day when the Nets and Knicks have the kind of heated rivalry that excites basketball fans?
A: Yeah. … Obviously we’re in a process right now, and our goal is not to look at the Knicks. You should not care about the Knicks. We should care about ourselves, about taking the proper steps of what we’re trying to build, about what we represent, and how we want to do those things, right? We have a vision now, the vision comes from ownership through management and the coaching staff, and the vision of being the team that we want to be and a certain style of play and how we want to compete … having success and sustaining success so at one time, if it happens that both teams are very, very, very good, that would be extremely cool, right? Fun. Two teams in the same city to fight for big things, that would be awesome.
Q: What do you see in the future?
A: I see success for this group, but success doesn’t mean just to win one, success is like sustaining it. A lot of times the one thing that we all have to understand is it’s OK that if you win, win, win, lose, win, win, lose … there has to be adversity, and whatever the adversity means. Sometimes it can be a loss. … Adversity can come in different ways, and you have to be ready to face adversity, whether it is in one point of a season or in a season, and I think that we all have to understand that knowing that the adversity can always show up, you have to be ready. You have to be ready to fight, you have to be ready to help, you have to be ready to support your players, your group. And I think that’s part of that growing and success is understanding that this adversity will be part of the journey, so that’s why I believe we’ll be good.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
A: I think try to organize everybody. Give everybody responsibility. And then accountability. 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.
Q: Do you have a lot of rules, and what won’t you tolerate?
A: Especially at the beginning, I think that if you come with too many rules, everything waters down a little bit. If you have too many that you cannot remember the rules, then the rules are no longer impactful. When you start building, let’s start with the simple rules, right? I tell the players, for instance, being on time is extremely important. Positive energy — because there’s no neutral energy, it’s either positive or negative. So you show up with a group, you need to have positive energy, because that impacts everybody else. And then the last one is be the best leader you can be, because everybody can be a leader, whether if it’s by example or if that goes back to doing what’s best for the team. 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. 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.
Q: What is your definition of a winning culture?
A: A winning culture means that you want to have success in the long run. The most important thing about winning, it’s earning respect. 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.
Q: Have you seen progress here in the culture?
A: So far, yeah. It’s very early in the process. Right now it’s we want to be competitive, we want to sustain success or winning, and then it goes to what we all want, a championship. And it’s not just one, but multiple? It seems like it’s too far, but you have to start at some point. So I think this is the beauty of going back to collaboration is how you organize everybody, you make everybody be part of it, give people ownership, and then holding them accountable. And it’s not just the players, but the rest of the coaching staff.
Q: What are the traits of your ideal basketball player?
A: The team’s always first. Toughness, and not just physically, but also mentally … missing a shot or missing two shots and then shooting the next one, that’s part of mental toughness. And then the last part is easy, is skill, right? You have to be skilled to play basketball.
Q: Are you a good motivator, and how do you motivate?
A: I don’t know if I’m good, but I try. Try to get a common goal. You need to find what people want, and then tell a story. 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? 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? Like I always tell my wife, I don’t read a lot — books — but I’m constantly reading things, and I’m constantly thinking. And thinking is a lot of times exhausting, because you’re thinking on how am I going to explain this. And obviously for me, English not being my first language, it’s like I give it more thought to be clear with my explanation.
Q: What makes you a problem solver?
A: Thinking, believing that I don’t have all the answers in the world, because nobody does. When you feel like you don’t have all the answers, what you do is you start thinking. If you feel you have all the answers, you don’t think as much.
Q: Have you always been comfortable in your own skin?
A: No. I think that we all go for different phases of security or insecurity or confidence. Obviously it starts when you’re developing and you’re a kid, and then you’re a teenager and a young adult and an adult, and obviously you can be more vulnerable because you’re not equipped the same way. You can be equipped because of your education — whether it’s your home education either with your family which is the most important one, or through school education, which is also important. And then experiences will teach you the most. The ones that hurt the most are ones that you will never forget. And from there is where you can feel the pain based on your values, and then it’s where you can build all that confidence in yourself. I think that it’s completely OK to feel insecure. That’s how you build confidence.
Q: Was there one experience you had to endure that was the most painful?
A: There’s been many in my life. There’s been a lot of situations where you feel uncertainty. When I was younger, for instance, you don’t know what’s going to happen with your life. What are you going to do for a living? Yeah, I love sports, I love basketball, but how are you going to do it? If it wasn’t going to happen, what are you going to do for work? The uncertainty always creates stress for me. But then I get to a point in my life that the most important thing … my dad always said, “It’s better to learn from your coaches what not to do than what to do.” I translated that to with my life. You would ask me, “What do you want to do for a living?” I was like, “I don’t know, but I know what I don’t want to do.” When I was very young, I started working in the summer, I worked in a supermarket and a factory at 6 a.m. just making money, learning what it is to go to a real job. And I could tell you that I knew that I did not want to wake up in the morning and feel like, “I’m not enjoying this job.” I want to wake up in the morning excited to go to work, and I want to be excited to spend time with my family. Going into spending hours with something that I’m not passionate about, that would create a lot of stress.
Q: What did you do at the supermarket?
A: I replenished shelves, and also took groceries home.
Q: How old were you?
A: 16, 15.
Q: How much did you make?
A: It was before the euro … I would say maybe $6 or $7 an hour.
Q: What is the biggest obstacle you had to overcome?
A: I think it’s leave everything that I had in Spain, my family — so my parents, my sister — and just come here to do a job that I didn’t know exactly where it was taking me. I didn’t speak English until my mid-, late-20s. And learning a language when you’re an adult or young adult, it’s very challenging. 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. 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. That was the beginning of my journey here. It was probably challenging because uncertainty. … I was doing something that I completely loved, so I didn’t care as much, but I didn’t know how much I would miss my parents and my friends.
Q: How does the cutthroat nature of the NBA affect your psyche and your ability to deal with the pressure?
A: 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. Otherwise you should not be doing this job. If you cannot deal with pressure, then don’t do this job, because I know that for a lot of people it can be like you can get like mental health problems. When I came here, I was by myself, but now, I have a wife and kids, so you no longer work for yourself. Life changes and you have different pressures and stuff like that. Overall, I’ve always liked the pressure that comes with the job.
Q: Whatever comes to mind: Kyrie Irving.
A: Talent.
Q: Mike Brown.
A: Organized.
Q: RJ Barrett.
A: Ability to score.
Q: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
A: Happy kid.
Q: Mike Malone.
A: Attention to detail.
Q: Who was your favorite player to watch growing up?
A: Drazen Petrovic. He was one of the best European players ever. It’s a story of a European making it here.
Q: Who are coaches in other sports you admire?
A: [Manchester City manager] Pep Guardiola. He’s had success everywhere he’s been. I know him personally. Just the way he communicates, the way he challenges his players, what he projects as a person, the values, it tells you why this dude has had success with every club he’s managed.
Q: If you could coach one game against any coach in NBA history, who would it be?
A: Phil Jackson. I was born in the early ’80s, and then the Bulls had all that success. So that was the beginning of me falling in love with basketball. We could not watch a lot of NBA when I was young because of the time difference, there was no Internet, and it was also pay-per-view and we didn’t have at home.
Q: Tell me about the Impact Basketball academy.
A: [Founder] Joe Abunassar, I would not be here without him. He is the person that gave me the opportunity to come to the U.S. And full circle of life, his son [Jack] now works here for us. I used to babysit him.
Q: You were an assistant on Team Nigeria for the 2020 Olympics.
A: A different reality of basketball, which was really cool to see because you can learn different cultures with basketball. It was really cool to go through the Olympics with a group of players that the most important thing for them was to represent their country.
Q: Previously you were an assistant for the Spain National Team.
A: I was able to work with the golden generation, the best generation that Spain has ever had, with Hall of Famers like Pau Gasol. … It was an extreme honor.
Q: The G League Canton Charge.
A: My first real opportunity to be a head coach. It was a lot of showing people that I could do it. Because when you come here, you feel like not a lot of people believe that you can be a head coach. I didn’t feel like I was perfect, because nobody is, but I believed that I could do it, and you can show it to people.
Q: Describe your hour hometown, Badalona, Spain.
A: It’s got the best three things in the world — being on the water … basketball … every kid plays basketball, basketball’s the No. 1 sport … and then [No.] 3 is the people. Everybody knows everybody, which you can hate at times, because my wife when we go back she’s like, “You’re like the Mayor!” (smile). Everything you do, you walk. And then you get to see people as you go to places but you were not planning on doing it. You’re close to a big city. My hometown to Barcelona would be the same as Brooklyn to Manhattan.
Q: Favorite Brooklyn things?
A: Go to the piers with my kids and my wife, either biking or scootering. It has to be a sunny day, though. You can see Manhattan, you can see the Statue of Liberty.
Q: Three dinner guests?
A: Freddy Mercury, Amy Winehouse, Prince. I would like to know how their creative minds work … obviously one of them, Amy Winehouse, took her life, which goes to mental health. I don’t know if that would be something that she’d be comfortable talking to me about, but being an amazing artist why you get to that point. … With Freddie, I’m from Barcelona so it was the Olympics, and he’s the one that sang one of the songs that announced the Olympics would be in Barcelona, and that was right at the point where he was already diagnosed, it was the beginning of when AIDs was a big thing as far as like a disease that we didn’t know what it was, everybody was so scared.
How the fame affected him, his relationship with the band where it was not always great. When you’re in a team like we are here, when you’re with a team for so long, it’s how you keep that alive where you have different roles. In that band the cool thing was different guys creating different songs, it’s not just one songwriter and everything, but how those dynamics affected the band, and he was on his own and then he came back to the group when he was already sick and they kind of like reunited a little bit. I would be curious about that. … And then Prince, how many songs that he wrote that other artists ended up singing. He could play every instrument, like how his mind works, to be able not just to write something for yourself but for others. I’d probably need more than one dinner. Or a very long one.
Q: Favorite movie?
A: “Despicable Me 3” right now. because it’s a movie that I watch with my kids.
Q: Favorite actor?
A: Jack Nicholson.
Q: Favorite actress?
A: Penelope Cruz.
Q: Favorite entertainer/singer?
A: Oasis.
Q: Favorite meal?
A: Whatever my grandma cooks. She lives in Barcelona. She’s 94. She’s amazing. The funny thing is she taught my parents, myself to make all the traditional dishes that she makes.
Q: What is your best basketball moment?
A: I’m going to go with beating Team USA and getting bronze with Team Canada. We got the first medal in a World Cup for Canadian basketball [in 2023].
Q: What are your future Team Canada coaching plans?
A: Right now my commitment it’s up until this year, and then we need to have conversations.
Q: What do you hope your players say about you?
A: The one thing is that they enjoy the process that we have here, not just so much about me, and that I can earn their respect. We can agree to disagree, and usually the coach chooses the minutes that the players play and a lot of times there’s disagreement. But all I can say at the end is hopefully they see that I do what’s best for the team. Or I try to. Because I’m going to make mistakes. I always tell the guys that I don’t have all the answers, but the one thing that I can try to tell them is if my mistakes are honest mistakes, I think we can all live with it. And the same with them. I think honest mistakes are good for everybody. When you’re not trying to do what’s best for the team is when it gets tricky.
Q: What drives you?
A: It drives me to take the next step, to never stay in the same place, to always see what’s next.
Q: Career goal?
A: 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. Because if I ever feel like my life or it’s like this is the final point, I’m going back home and I’m living on the beach and I’m going to be happy.
Q: Your message to Brooklyn Nets fans?
A: 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.
