Jordi Fernandez, Canada's new coach | Sports

Jordi Fernandez continues to break barriers. The Badalona coach was named on Wednesday as Canada's new head coach ahead of the FIBA ​​World Cup scheduled for Aug. 25-Sept. 10 in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. It's another giant leap in the career of Fernandez, who currently holds the position of senior assistant for the Sacramento Kings, the highest position a Spaniard has ever achieved in the NBA. Last December, in addition…

Jordi Fernandez continues to break barriers. The Badalona coach was named on Wednesday as Canada's new head coach ahead of the FIBA ​​World Cup scheduled for Aug. 25-Sept. 10 in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. It's another giant leap in the career of Fernandez, who currently holds the position of senior assistant for the Sacramento Kings, the highest position a Spaniard has ever achieved in the NBA. Last December, he also served as head coach for a few minutes in the Kings' game against the Toronto Raptors after coach Mike Brown was fired.

Fernandes replaces Nick Nurse on the Canadiens bench after making a name for himself in the NBA through a lot of patience and hard work. The Catalan coach played basketball until he began his experience on the bench at the age of 15. He ran coaching classes in Badalona and Hospitalet Lleida, and while graduating in Physical Activity and Sports Science, he studied in Amsterdam and began his doctorate in Sports Psychology. When he was about to finish it, he was already part of Hospitalet's coaching staff: first coach of the youth team and physical coach of the first team of LEB Plata. Then he got a call from the United States that would change his life. “I went to America with one hand in front and the other in the back for a summer camp, and I ended up in a company that was dedicated to training professional players on vacation.” It was 2006, Jordi was 23 and it was just a round trip. Three seasons later, the big door opened: a position in the player development department with the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James was on the list.

From there, he worked for the Denver Nuggets as an assistant between 2016 and 2022, a period during which he worked with another star, Nikola Jokic, until last summer he moved up another step when he was hired as a first assistant by the Kings. Last year, Sacramento achieved a record of 48 wins and 34 losses, its best stats since the 2004-05 season, and played in the final title series for the first time since 2006 (losing in the first round 4-3 to the Golden State Warriors).

In recent weeks, the Spaniard has been in the pools to be the head coach of the Toronto Raptors, like Sergio Scariolo, a position that will be filled by Serbian Darko Rajakovic. Fernandez has been through all the stages of the MLS bench, and is highly regarded for his coaching in the American competition system. “I don't consider myself American, but I adapt. You can't go to a different culture and not want to adapt. It's like going to Spain and wanting to have dinner at six o'clock. I'm European, I have my identity, and I come from a different basketball background, but I learned how things work here. If you are able to understand that, you can do very well. “If not, you will not succeed,” he explained to El País newspaper last October.

During that career in the American NBA, the Catalan was an assistant in the Spanish national team between 2017 and 2019, and in the Nigerian national team in the recent Tokyo Games. “Having the opportunity to lead Canada this summer at the World Cup is a very exciting opportunity and something I am very grateful for,” Fernandez said. “Not many international programs have the ceiling that this team does, and that is a testament to the hard work and growth that Canadian Basketball, as well as Nick Nurse and his team, have done over the past few years.”

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