Head Coach Jordi Fernández didn’t intend to boast of his previous achievements on Friday evening, but he did when he said, “I don’t know, I’ve been part of [defenses] that went from bottom, or very young to top 10, twice.”
That’s a snippet from a much longer answer on his overall defensive philosophy, which in his first year with the Brooklyn Nets, has tilted quite aggressive. Pick-and-roll ball-handlers are almost always met by two defenders, players near the sideline are trapped, and occasionally, a full-court press is deployed.
Said Fernández: “I think that playoff teams are able to — if you watch the playoffs, the best defenders pick up full-court. When you have to switch defenses, you have to be aggressive at times against the best players in the world. You can play up the floor, you can play down the floor, you can switch. So going back to the best defensive teams in the NBA, they’re able to do one, two, and three. And I think it’s not fair for a new team — or a young team — to try to do three things. You try to do one. In my opinion, you try to do what’s most aggressive first, and then you evolve to be a team that can switch coverages easily and still be very good.”
This is the most transparent Fernández has been about his short- and long-term goals with Brooklyn’s defense. But we can’t just say the Nets play with their hair on fire and leave it at that. Their game-plans against the league’s very best have been aggressive, sure, but detailed as well. We saw a matchup zone against the Houston Rockets and their army of subpar shooters, all sorts of traps and blitzes against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and everything from single-coverage to post denials against Nikola Jokić.
“They do a great job,” said Nic Claxton of his coaching staff. “We watch a lot of film, we practice, we walk through a lot of stuff.”
That level of preparation shows on the court, even on a night when the Brooklyn Nets were eviscerated by 40 points from Steph Curry. Sometimes, there truly is nothing you can do....
Other times, there are. Brooklyn won Thursday’s first quarter 35-15, displaying not just aggression against a singular superstar and offense, but poise.
It was a quarter that could lead the campaign for Jordi Fernández to get some down-ballot votes for Coach of the Year. So could this Steve Kerr quote from pregame: “I’m so impressed with Jordi. I think he’s crushing the job with a difficult hand to play. Jordi has had to face a lot this year, moves that they’ve made, trying to play a lot of young guys and all that. And he’s got them playing hard. They’re doing a lot of creative stuff. I think Jordi is doing a great job.”
Brooklyn likely won’t reach 30 wins, despite Fernández’s objectively great work. So no, he’s not going to win the award. Oddly enough, his lack of rostered talent is also helping him deploy such creative, hard-nosed schemes.
This cannot be lost in any evaluation of Fernández in 2024-25: He has guys willing to get down and dirty, fighting to achieve or maintain an NBA career. What that looks like with the type of roster Brooklyn hopes to build sometime in Fernández’s tenure is anybody’s guess. But that’s a worry for another time.
For now, here’s a video breaking down an epic coaching battle from Thursday night, which started with Brooklyn’s finest defensive quarter of the season, and ended with a ferocious response from Golden State...
Sound on
-- Breaking down Brooklyn's unique defensive scheme against the Warriors, one which led to their finest quarter of the season
-- How the Warriors ultimately counteracted it, in a fascinating coaching battle that went down on Thursday night: pic.twitter.com/M4hNl9mU8M
— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) March 7, 2025