Jordi Fernandez Praises Trendon Watford's Performance Against Heat

On Friday night, the Brooklyn Nets took on the Miami Heat as they looked to bounce back off of a tough loss to the Washington Wizards earlier in the week, which brought their three-game winning streak to an end.

One of the talking points going into the match was surrounding the continued absence of Noah Clownley, who has been sidelined since late January due to a left ankle sprain.

To fill the spot left by the 20-year-old’s absence, Nets’ head coach Jordi Fernandez has opted to use a combination of Jalen Wilson, Tosan Evbuomwan, and Trendon Watford.

The latter of the aforementioned trio would be a key part of Brooklyn’s triumph over Miami on Friday night, as Watford would come off of the bench to provide an offensive spark that catapulted his team to victory in the fourth quarter.

In the final 12 minutes of the match, the 24-year-old would drop eight points on an efficient 80 percent from the field, which would make up a bulk of his offensive production for the night, ending the match with 12 points, four rebounds, and three assists.

While these numbers weren’t team-highs by any means, it didn’t stop Fernandez from heaping praise on Watford following the win, with one of the topics surrounding his utility on the court.

“It was great because we all know that Trendon is multi-positional… he can play off the ball, he can post up, he can run pick and roll,” explained the Nets’ head coach, “All of those things are as a coach, a privilege to have a player that you can move around and do different things, we ask him to run the team and he did a great job, vocal, engaged, and he’d score when we needed him to.”

Given the injury bug that has been biting the team as of late, with not only Clownley being sidelined, but also the likes of Cam Thomas, De’Anthony Melton, and Cameron Johnson, who just returned from a lengthy term on the bench, Fernandez preached the Nets’ “next-man” mentality when it comes to getting the most out of the team.

“Four rebounds, three assists, amazing job,” said Fernandez,” We’ve been having this next-man mentality, we know that he can do it and he stepped up and helped the team win the game.”

With some reports indicating that Clownley could miss some extended time due to the calf injury, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Watford continue to come in and provide notable contributions off of the bench.

Want to join the discussion? Like Nets on SI on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest Nets news. You can also meet the team behind the coverage.