Brooklyn Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez has been a busy man this summer as he is trying to guide Team Canada to a gold medal in the Olympics while overseeing the team. Fernandez has been known as a player development coach for awhile now, but Brooklyn has also changed significantly since he was hired.
“I think Sean (Marks) said it. I was going through a process. We know that we wanted to do something sustainable, and we wanted to win and build something very special,” Fernandez said prior to the beginning of the Las Vegas Summer League to the media when asked about the Mikal Bridges trade. When Fernandez was hired for the job, the Nets seemed like a team that wanted to build towards the future with Bridges in the fold, but things changed last month when Brooklyn traded him to the New York Knicks.
“There were different avenues to do it, and this was a possible one,” Fernandez said. “We just could not control what other teams would offer, so we would have to sit and wait. He (Marks) had different avenues to get there. When the opportunity presented itself, he called me, and I knew before it came out to the media.”
As a result of the Bridges trade, the Nets were able to acquire as many as five first-round picks and three players, including veteran forward Bojan Bogdanovic, someone that can still space the floor and score and will also be entering his second stint with Brooklyn. After a trade with the Houston Rockets in which the Nets gained control of some of their draft picks, Brooklyn is set up for a encouraging rebuild and Fernandez is all for it.
“I was very excited because I know how the NBA works, and I know how good you can get when you have assets, flexibility, and so forth. I’m just very excited,” Fernandez said.
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