Everybody had their job in the Nets ecosystem. Some have more than one, some more important than others.
As a rookie head coach, Jordi Fernandez has a host of new responsibilities — from implementing systems on both ends of the court to managing the game to dealing with the media.
But no job is more important than development.
Not just developing players, but developing a winning culture.
That means setting a standard they’re going to measure up to.
“Yeah, that’s my No. 1 priority,” Fernandez said before Sunday’s 114-104 loss to the Knicks at the Garden. “That comes with what you do in your day to day, right? Are you willing to get 1 percent better every day? Are you willing to build relationships with your players? Are you willing to accept your role, and not just accept it but embrace it? Those things are at the end of the day, what’s going to keep building our identity.
“So far, I’m very proud of the guys. You guys can see the games and how these guys fight. If the mistakes are honest mistakes, we’re trying, it’s all good. But you don’t see the day-to-day, what they do in practice and how they interact with each other, and I’m very happy with how the process is going so far. We’re not close yet, but we’ve made progress. So, it’s just the beginning, and we have a plan.”
The Nets had dropped four out of their past five going into Sunday’s game at the Garden.
But nobody who has watched them — even before they erased Friday’s 19-point fourth-quarter deficit to take a lead with 12 seconds left — could deny that Fernandez has them buying in and playing hard.
The Nets drew just nine charges all of last season, the least of any team since such stats started being tracked, per Elias Sports Bureau. But they came into Sunday with seven in 13 games, tied for ninth-best in the NBA this season.
But for a franchise coming off a 32-50 season so disappointing that it prompted them to trade Mikal Bridges to the Knicks and start a rebuild, it isn’t just about how they play.
It’s about how they practice. Even how they live.
Hence Fernandez’s “get one percent better every day” mantra.
“[It came from] a lot of the coaches that I’ve worked with. Starting with Mike Brown, Byron Scott, David Blatt, Ty Lue, Michael Malone, Sergio Scariolo, all those coaches that I’ve worked with, I have a lot of respect for them. Helping me understand that yes, games are important, everybody gets excited with playing games. But if you take care of getting 1 percent better, especially when people are not looking at you, watching you, what you do.
“It can be getting shots on your own, but also it can be, ‘I’ve got to take care of my body. I need to rest. I need to eat the right things. I need to take care of my body. I need to handle my stress.’ There’s a lot of ways in our job to be better that it’s going to help the overall performance. For the guys, it’s just not basketball. It’s not just shooting the ball. It’s not just playing defense. But it’s everything that we do.”
Fernandez has leaned on Brooklyn’s veterans to help preach that.
His preferred starting lineup of Dennis Schroder, Cam Thomas, Cam Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith and Nic Claxton is their most-used quintet at 98 minutes together, and of three dozen lineups to log 50 minutes together they had the seventh-best Net Rating (13.2) and Defensive Rating (104.6).
“The NBA is mentally tough, especially when you’re young. And then the veteran players, they just know how to do it. So we’re getting there,” Fernandez said. “Yeah, losing hurts. And it hurts to all of us. But building an identity [is the key]. … I’ve got to give them the positives, the negatives and the challenges, and then we’ll go from there.
“At the end of the day, building this foundation, establishing our identity is the most important thing for us, because we have a plan in place, and sustaining this success is what we want to do.”