The festivities are over. The Brooklyn Nets introduction of Jordi Fernandez as their new head coach, including a press conference, live and taped interviews with YES Network, an availability for the Spanish media who were there to celebrate Spain’s first NBA coach. Sean Marks talked to media as well, offering up the latest on the team Fernandez will coach.
Now, of course, comes the hard work. Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Brooklyn has already reached agreements with two assistant coach candidates, Steve Hetzel, like Fernandez a respected NBA assistant, and Juwan Howard, who played 19 years in the NBA and has both assistant (Miami Heat) and head coaching (University of Michigan) experience.
Fernandez will also be shuttling between his two head coaching jobs this summer: the Nets and Team Canada who he’s leading into the Paris Olympics. Fernandez and Marks believe he’ll be able to do both and Marks argued that giving Fernandez more experience with the clipboard is a positive thing.
The next milestones for both jobs will occur start at the end of June. NBA free agency opens the same day as Team Canada training camp in Las Vegas but once the key players are signed and re-signed — and that usually happens quickly, everyone will be in Vegas anyway. Team Canada trains there and will play Team USA on July 10. Las Vegas Summer League opens two days later.
No doubt there will be more features on who Fernandez is. There’s one this weekend, in fact, from Brian Lewis who spoke with Cleveland Cavaliers GM Mike Gansey, who worked with Fernandez during the new head coach’s first NBA experience in the G League more than a decade ago.
“I’m super excited for Jordi. That guy’s like family, a brother to me; so you guys are getting a good one in Brooklyn,” Gansey told the Post.
Indeed, Gansey spoke to Lewis about one very telling incident early in his career that he believed showed Fernandez’s character and just how much committed he is to the team concept.
Gansey first became acquainted with Fernandez’s character not by the job he did, but by the one he didn’t get. In 2013 Gansey interviewed both Fernandez — then a player development coach for the Cavs — and Steve Hetzel for the Charge head coach position. Gansey went with the latter.
“I went with Hetz instead of Jordi, and Jordi was pretty devastated for a couple of days,” Gansey said. “He was disappointed, frustrated. But then two days later, he’s like ‘I’m all-in as associate head coach.’ And it’s kind of it all went from there, because he was the best assistant for Hetz, and now Hetz is going to be the best assistant for him. So it just shows you his character and his personality that he was upset, but he knew that this was going to be his path.
“He could’ve easily just said, ‘You know what, I don’t want to do this: I’m gonna go back to player development or I’m gonna go to a different organization.’ But he took it as a challenge. I know he wasn’t happy about it … and now he’s reversing course and Hetz is his assistant. That was one thing that always stood out with showing his character and his drive, even though he wasn’t happy about that at the time.”
Now, Hetzel is coming to Brooklyn as Fernandez most trusted assistant coaches. Gansey also echoed what others have said about his ability to build relationships.
“The guys are gonna love to play for him. There’s so much enthusiasm every single day,” Gansey told Lewis. “Here in Cleveland when he was here pre-LeBron when we struggled, you could easily have a bad day and just say we’re just gonna get some shots up and have no energy or enthusiasm. But Brooklyn loses five in a row, he’s gonna be the same guy, and then that sixth game that win comes and then you’re gonna win five in a row. He’s just got that personality and fire that that’s going to happen.”
Hopefully, those losing streaks don’t happen too often. So, other a trip to Chicago for the NBA Draft combine in mid-May, maybe a community event here or there and a visit to the New York Liberty game, Fernandez will probably be low-key and out of the public eye. And if you’re wondering, Nets don’t advertise who will be at Draft workouts.
Liberty open camp with high hopes
The New York Liberty open camp Sunday. the last time we saw the seafoam and black, they were losing in the WNBA Finals to the Las Vegas Aces. That certainly stung. The Aces are the odds-on favorite to repeat but the Liberty still has Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton and Courtney Vandersloot.
We’ll be covering Liberty camp as they get ready for their first exhibition game on May 7 vs. the Chicago Sky, then opening night in Washington vs. the Mystics, their home opener, vs. Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, on May 18, a nationally televised (ABC) game
Not only are there high hopes for the team on the court, the Liberty’s basketball and business side think they can make a mark in attendance. In a Team USA promotion 10 days ago, Stewart spoke about the “buzz” around women’s basketball and the WNBA in the city.
“There’s been a buzz literally in Brooklyn since the season ended,” said.Stewart, the WNBA’s reigning MVP. “I see people on the street. I mean bus drivers are beeping their horn at me on the crosswalk and I’m thinking ‘what’s happening here.’ People are excited to have a New York sports team to have success. Now, the Knicks are playing really well also. So we need that and we want that.
“And I hope when we get to Barclays, we’ll pick up where we left off and have 17, 18,000 in there from Game 3 on. I think Game 3 is our home opener and we’ll be ready to go.”
So did Stewie just break some news there? She’s hoping for Liberty sellouts at Barclays where the capacity for NBA/WNBA basketball is 17,732. The only way to get to that number is by opening the upper deck for WNBA games a rare event. Without the upper bowl, capacity is limited to about 8,000.
As Brian Fleurantin, who covers the Liberty for ND notes, the Libs didn’t open the upper deck last season until the WNBA Finals. Looking at the Caitlin Clark home opener on Ticketmaster, it appears that at least for that game, the upper deck will be open. Will that continue? There’s been no official announcement but it wouldn’t be a surprise with women’s basketball exploding.
Draft Sleeper of the Week
Sean Marks said Wednesday that the Nets could move into the first round of the 2024 Draft if there was someone the team’s scouts liked and was “slipping” in the Draft. He threw out the No. 20 pick (as well as the No. 44) as the kind of pick that might interest them. Nothing specific beyond that.
So we took a look at who the draftniks think will be sitting at No. 44. On the ESPN mock draft, that means Trevon Brazile, a 6’10” wing for the Arizona Razorbacks. Brazile checks number a number of boxes on the slippage questionnaire. At 21, he’s a bit older than a sophom*ore might be and he’s has an injury history, tearing his ACL in December 2022. Moreover, he’s played with a number of NBA prospects in Fayetteville, so his skills may have been overlooked.
His skillset is quite varied, He played point guard in high school, winning a Missouri state championship. A hyper athlete, he has developed a knack as a shot blocker as well and shot 37.9% and 35.3% from deep in his last two years at Arkansas. Position-less basketball much.
Here’s some highlights:
Of course, we don’t know if the Nets will actually wiggle their way into the draft. Nor do we have access to Brooklyn’s scouting reports on any prospect, but what we have started to see is speculation on which teams might be willing to make a deal. The Indiana Pacer, it’s been noted, have three second round picks at Nos. 36, 49 and 50 while the rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers have the fourth, 14th, 34th and 40th picks. In fact, our sister site, Blazers Edge wrote this weekend about the Nets willingness to deal and what the Blazers might want in return ... “talented players.”
They could trade a young player but at this point, the Nets are not interested in dumping youth but rather accumulating it. Jordi Fernandez said this week that the Nets youth was a big selling point for him.
There are a number of other ways that the Nets could acquire a pick. They could buy one — “cash considerations” — but that’s not been a path teams have taken of late. Even second rounders have carried a $3 million price tags. . Dorian Finney-Smith? The 31-year-old would be a good pick-up for a competing team, but not for a rebuilding one. The Nets can also use their trade exceptions.
The most likely route? A future second for a 2024 second. The Nets control 11 second rounders between 2025 and 2031, having just acquired three future Grizzlies second rounders in the Royce O’Neale deadline trade.
As we’ve noted, in the six NBA Drafts he’s overseen, Sean Marks has made a trade affecting the Nets’ draft position six times. Each of those times, the deal got done within 48 hours of the Draft. So we will have a while to contemplate the possibilities.
KD’s journey back
ESPN’s Baxter Holmes wrote this week about how Kevin Durant keeps going despite his age. He played 75 games this season and finished sixth in minutes played, eight minutes less than Paolo Banchero, 14 years his junior.
A big part of the report concerned how KD came back from his achilles injury in the 2019 NBA Finals, the prelude to his departure from Golden State and arrival in Brooklyn. Holmes doesn’t spend a lot of time on how the Nets helped him recover ... but Durant did publicly thank the Nets medical/performance teams after he was traded to Phoenix.
The Nets, it shouldn’t be forgotten, signed Durant to a guaranteed four-year deal despite his uncertain future. They relied on a diagnosis provided by their foot/ankle specialist, Dr. Martin O’Malley who was convinced that despite a lot of history, Durant could return to his MVP form.
As Durant told Holmes, he wasn’t so sure himself, recalling his thoughts as he laid, face down, on a table on Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. ”This is career-ending, I’m done,” Durant said of his immediate anxiety. “That’s what I was thinking, because that’s all I was hearing, that this s--- is over.”
To help assure a smooth recovery, the Nets decided to go beyond utilizing their own performance team. They wanted a physiotherapist to work directly with Durant, to focus his attention and chose Andy Barr, a British specialist who had been director of performance and rehabilitation for the New York Knicks from 2009 to 2015. His specialty is helping athletes recover from what look like catastrophic injuries. Barr had worked with former Nets D’Angelo Russell and Yi Jianlian at Quantum Performance in southern California, his homebase.
As Holmes writes, the Nets kept Barr on staff, working with him through his four years in Brooklyn.
For four years, the two worked together, with Barr, whom the Nets hired as a consulting physiotherapist, taking a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York almost every week — leaving on a Sunday night and returning to L.A. on Fridays. Depending on the team schedule, they’d work together nine-to-five on some days but 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on others.
As every Nets fan knows, Durant did return to his previous form but at the end of the day, it’s a business and he left. Still, as Holmes also writes and Durant acknowledges, the Nets medical/performance team deserves its reputation.
The reviews are in ...
Clara Wu Tsai has been along with husband Joe a big contributor to the arts in New York, giving $50 million to the renovation of David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, on whose board Clara Wu Tsai sits.
Working with the New York Board of Education, she and Joe funded the inclusion of a Jean-Michel Basquiat curriculum in New York’s public schools and has produced several films: a 2018 environmental documentary Into the Okavango, 2021 drama Blue Bayou, and 2022 WNBA documentary Unfinished Business.
This season on Broadway, she’s ventured into a role She’s producer — aka backer — of Hell’s Kitchen, a new musical by Alicia Keys, composer of among other things, Empire State of Mind with Jay-Z, that opened last week. The reviews are in and Hell’s Kitchen is a hit.
- “CRITIC’S PICK:...easily stands out as one of the rare must-sees in a crowded season.” - New York Times.
- “Hell’s Kitchen is ultimately a celebration of the city—and the people who make it pop.” - Time Out New York.
- “Alicia Keys Musical brings a vibrant depiction of teen girlhood to Broadway” - Variety.
Why mention this? Other than to update all that Joe and Clara Wu Tsai have done for the arts in New York? It’s yet another indication that the Tsais remain committed to the city — whether in sports, the arts, social justice, etc. They’re here for the long run, as they say on Broadway.
Final Note
Starting Thursday, we (that is Net Income) will be traveling on a much needed vacation to Turkey and Greece. While we have updated the site from a variety of places, from Tehran to Honolulu and many points in between, we don’t intend to spend THAT much time on the site until we return on May 20. In the interim, the rest of the gang will be updating you on both the Nets and Liberty who open while we’re in Athens, contemplating the Acropolis and looking for Nets gear on the street.
