The Brooklyn Nets are among the NBA's top surprise teams early this season, and much of the credit has gone to first-time head coach Jordi Fernandez. Despite many labeling them as the league's worst team entering 2024-25, the Nets are off to a 4-4 start. Fernandez's squad has routinely outworked opponents, overcoming a high-end talent deficit to post the Eastern Conference's fifth-best point differential.
Several players have credited the coach's direct approach when speaking on Brooklyn's surprise start.
“Jordi is going to keep it real with you, straight up. He's not gonna sugarcoat anything,” Ziaire Williams said. “He expects us to play at a certain standard every night, and if we don’t play to that standard, we're gonna hear from him. So he doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. He wants five guys on the floor competing at all times and the rest of the guys on the bench cheering us on.”
Fernandez, the first Spanish-born head coach in NBA history, has taken a stern, disciplinarian approach with the Nets.
Jordi Fernandez's direct approach seeing positive results with Nets
Several veterans described this year's training camp as the most difficult of their careers. Fernandez set the tone during the preseason, calling out individual players for poor efforts following a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The approach has seen results thus far. The Nets look different in the hustle department compared to last year. They've posted the NBA's tenth-best offense, moving without the ball and grinding opposing defenses late into shot clocks.
Defensively, they've embraced Fernandez's emphasis on ball pressure, forcing forcing 15.8 turnovers per game, the sixth-most in the league. They're allowing the NBA's fifth-fewest offensive rebounds and have already drawn four charges after recording nine all of last season.