Much of the outside chatter surrounding the Nets is about chasing Donovan Mitchell. And it likely will be until the superstar signs an extension in Cleveland or gets traded elsewhere.
But within the Nets organization? Everything they say — and far more importantly, everything they do — still hints at a reset for 2025.
Just listen to what Nets owner Joe Tsai said this week.
“The Brooklyn Nets is at a crossroads in a way,” Tsai acknowledged Thursday, speaking at J.P. Morgan’s Global China Summit in Shanghai. “…We didn’t do as well as we expected last season. We didn’t make the playoffs, but we hope to revamp the team and make sure that we can compete in the long run.
“I think there’s a difference — when people ask owners: what do you want to do with a basketball team? — there’s a difference between I want to win versus I want to build a winning mentality and culture that’s sustainable. Those two are very different things. … If you want to be just ‘win now,’ you could ruin your future by trading away all of your assets and just win now. But I think what I want to do with the Brooklyn Nets is to take a longer-term approach and build a winning, sustainable winning culture.”
And that was evident in the choice Tsai and Nets general manager Sean Marks made for their head coach.
Picking Jordi Fernandez, a first-time NBA head coach with a development background, instead of a proven-but-pricey veteran such as Mike Budenholzer speaks to that.
The sort of assistant coaches Fernandez has surrounded himself with is further proof of the Nets’ unspoken acknowledgement of where they are.
“It’s a really exciting team, a team that has the ability to play fast in the full court, halfcourt,” Fernandez said last month. “The youth is always great, right, because that allows you to have a team for the long run. That’s what excites me the most, and to make players better.
“Our job as coaches is to work with those guys and to take them to the next step. If they don’t get better, it’s on me and the rest of the coaching staff. So I’m excited about the process, I’m excited about getting to work with them. I’ve already been in touch with every single one of them. We’re going to take it one day at a time, so when the first game comes we’ll be ready to compete.”
Despite being voted by the NBA’s general managers as the best assistant in the league, moving one seat (and 18 inches) down the bench represents a different task. While Fernandez is regarded as a keen basketball mind and a high-character sort, his ability to develop talent might be his most well-known attribute.
The 41-year-old has largely assembled a coaching staff in that image.
And when asked what excites him most about a Nets team that went just 32-50 last season, he didn’t mention a star on the roster or the assets to go get one (such as Mitchell).
No, he pointed to the young talent he and his staff will get a chance to mold.
Talent such as Nic Claxton — if the 25-year-old big man is re-signed as an unrestricted free agent this summer — and 22-year-old scoring guard Cam Thomas, plus 19-year-olds Noah Clowney and Dariq Whitehead.
“The youth excites me,” Fernandez said. “When you have a young roster — and talented — that means that you’re going to have those guys for a long time. So you can develop them, and then they can perform at their best, and they’re here with you. So that’s extremely exciting, the flexibility that we’ll have, the resources that we have.
“We have a first-class owner, we have a first-class management group, front office. So if you put all that together, that’s a perfect recipe for success.”
Tsai, the Alibaba co-founder and chairman, also co-owns the WNBA’s New York Liberty with his wife, Clara.
Fernandez sat courtside with Clara on Monday night for the Liberty’s win over Seattle, and had a chunk of his new staff with him.
Meet the new staff
That group is rounding into focus, and almost each coach has a development bent.
Steve Hetzel, who has had a 19-year career with San Antonio, Cleveland and Portland, is the lead assistant. Fernandez has called Hetzel a “coaching father” after working under him with the Cavs’ G League team.
“[Fernandez] has got a very strong player development background,” Cavaliers general manager Mike Gansey told The Post. “When I became an intern with the Cavs, he was here, and seeing him every day work with players, how much the players love being around him, getting better with him.”
Gansey had been the general manager of the Cavs’ G League affiliate, and gave Hetzel the head coaching job with Fernandez as his assistant. The next season, he promoted Fernandez upon Hetzel’s departure, and now he says the pair will give the Nets a clear player development flavor.
“Your young players are going to get better every single day between those two,” Gansey said. “Obviously Jordi’s great, but now adding Hetz, it’s just more ammunition. Guys are gonna get better, you’re gonna play fast, it’s gonna be fun.”
Adam Caporn, Ryan Forehan Kelly and Corey Vinson are holdovers from the staff that first worked under Jacque Vaughn and then under interim coach Kevin Ollie. Jay Hernandez also has been retained, according to Hoopshype.
Considering Forehan Kelly’s development work with Claxton and Vinson’s close relationship with Mikal Bridges, both were always expected back.
In addition to Hetzel, new assistants include Juwan Howard (the former University of Michigan head coach), Connor Griffin (who was popular with his players in Denver the past two seasons, where he won a ring) and former Lithuanian pro Deividas Dulkys, who spent the past two years in Sacramento working alongside Fernandez and developing free agent-to-be Malik Monk.
Griffin and Dulkys are player development coaches, bringing the group of assistants to eight.
It’s unclear whether Travis Bader, the Nets’ lead video coordinator who also attended the Liberty game with Fernandez, has been elevated to a ninth assistant position.
Further developments
But what is clear is that no wise old head and former head coach has been hired to help Fernandez, the way Steve Nash had first his own former head coach Mike D’Antoni and then veteran Steve Clifford to lean on.
The Nets even got rid of Ollie, Ronnie Burrell (G League Coach of the Year in 2023) and Will Weaver (who had been a head coach in the G League, Australia and France, as well as Ollie’s lead assistant).
On this staff, only Hetzel and Caporn even have been G League head coaches. Howard was a head coach in college, though his game-day management came into question in Ann Arbor.
Considering where the Nets are in their retooling, Budenholzer likely makes far more sense where he landed with the win-now Suns.
The Nets clearly are looking toward development, and Fernandez’s staffing choices double down on that.
“I think there’s context around every hire that’s made, and it suits the roster better than others at certain times, where you are on your timeline,” Marks said last month. “I think something that separates Jordi from a lot of the candidates that we found [was] that he could look at a developmental roster. He could do various different pathways. He’s coached stars before, he’s been the head of director of development before, he’s worn many hats.
“…You never know how your players are going to take that leap, some take it quicker than others. So the hope with some of these guys on this roster is that they can take that leap maybe quicker than [expected]. I never want to limit them.”
If anything, the Nets want to accelerate them.
And the composition of this coaching staff shows they’re banking on it.
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