Brooklyn Nets Must Give Jordi Fernandez Runway to Succeed

The Brooklyn Nets might have one of the league’s best bench bosses, but they must let him show his skills.

Over the past few years, the Nets have been a bit of a mess. After nearly winning it all in 2021, the Nets haven’t won a playoff game since, and that doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

Still, Brooklyn has made some strides in the past few years as it’s left the contending era behind to focus on the current rebuild. After failing to tank last season, the Nets still ended up with five first-round picks to offset their unsuccessful year.

Of course, Brooklyn will be handing over those five first-round picks to Jordi Fernandez as he looks to help develop and mold them into ideal NBA players. Fernandez came in as the Nets’ head coach last season and had a nice first season at the helm.

Although the talent in Brooklyn was severely lacking, he still helped the team get into the play-in race a couple of times throughout the 82-game season. Regardless of how well Fernandez coaches the Nets this season, any time in the play-in race seems like an impossibility. Even getting out of the bottom three in the Eastern Conference standings after the first month of the year seems incredibly unlikely.

While there is that expectation of losing now, the Nets must give Fernandez some time to figure things out when the switch is inevitably flipped to win-now. While it appears Sean Marks and the Nets are ready to see this rebuild through and give Fernandez the keys to succeed, there might not be a team with a worse track record on those issues than Brooklyn.

After another rising head coach in Kenny Atkinson had helped the Nets through a rebuild and back to the postseason, he was fired because of the wishes of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in 2020. While it might not be a mistake for the Nets to go star-hunting again in this era, completely abandoning their foundation again would have some severe consequences.

Sure, there’s always the possibility that Fernandez fizzles out as many coaches with solid first years do. However, the Nets need to ensure that any fizzling out would be because of Fernandez rather that not giving their head coach the resources and support to succeed.

The rebuild in Brooklyn looks to be a long road, but Fernandez should be a key piece along the way.