Jordi Fernandez is almost an unknown across Canada.
Six weeks from now — for better or worse — that is going to change.
The accidental coach of Canada’s Olympic basketball team opens training camp Friday with all eyes on the most talented, most expected, most exciting team in Canadian basketball history.
And all Fernandez has to do is make sure it all works.
We’ve waited to see the best play together for years in this country. And now, for the first time we get them.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Hamilton. Jamal Murray of Kitchener. Andrew Wiggins of Vaughan. R.J. Barrett and Dillon Brooks of Mississauga. Lu Dort of Montreal. All of them difference-makers in the NBA in different ways and now all of them together, with the deepest Team Canada lineup we’ve ever seen.
And a coach we just don’t know — or haven’t even met yet.
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This was once Jack Donohue’s stage and, for so many years in a flawed program, he doubled as after dinner speaker and basketball mentor. Jay Triano, his favourite player, came after that. In between there was Leo Rautins and the college legend Ken Shields and the baton was later handed to NBA champion, Nick Nurse.
This was supposed to be Nurse’s gig until he got fired in Toronto, hired in Philadelphia and decided he couldn’t coach both the Sixers and Team Canada at the same time. Steve Kerr could coach Golden State and Team USA at the same time, by the way.
Fernandez, heading into his first NBA season as a head coach with the Brooklyn Nets, looks at the coming Olympics and his Team Canada roster, not in personal terms but in team-building, Olympic-building, nation-building terms. He is not one of those look-at-me basketball coaches.
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“I don’t like to look back, I like to look forward,” Fernandez said in a recent telephone interview. “I have a tendency to think in a positive way. I’ve been told about past frustrations and past defeats (with Team Canada), but I can’t think about that.
“I’m excited about this team, for the country, for fans, for media, everyone should be excited. It’s an honour to have this job, to represent this country (he’s not Canadian, he’s Spanish). This (Olympics) is not about me.
“We have an opportunity here. We have a great group of players with high standards and goals. We may be pretty young and new to FIBA, but we have to keep building, through camp and every day at the Olympics.”
The original goal, last summer when Fernandez took over the team, was to get the group to Paris. Now the original goal begins all over again — to get the team to Paris. The round robin of the basketball tournament takes place in Lille, some 90 minutes away from the Eiffel Tower.
The Final Eight — two teams from each group — gets to Paris.
“That’s where we want to be,” Fernandez said.
“I want this team to be relentless, like the Arkells said,” Fernandez said, dropping a Canadian music reference. “We have talent, but talent doesn’t mean much if we’re not all together. We have to find a way to work through things when we struggle, because you always struggle in basketball games. We have to push through and get to that point mentally. That’s going to be a big factor for us.
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“I don’t fear anything in this, that’s how I live my life. I want my teams to live out their experiences. Anything can happen and you have to be prepared for that. I will always be fine if we fight and play the right way and, what excites me right now, is everybody is talking about Paris.
“But we’re not in Paris until we qualify for the tournament.”
Fernandez has been on this route before. He grew up around the the Spanish Olympic team and was a national team assistant from 2017-2019. He was an assistant to Mike Brown in Sacramento and an assistant to Brown as Nigerian Olympic coach in 2021 in Tokyo.
He has been a head coach in G-League, in Europe and now for the first time in the NBA. But this is his first gigantic assignment.
Team Canada finished fourth in the boycotted Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Since then, a little bit of Steve Nash in 2000 in Australia and really nothing else since then.
And now he’s coaching a roster with near-MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, with NBA champions Murray and Wiggins, with the team even Americans are concerned about heading to the Games. And the pressure is on him — to bring this team together quickly, to install a style of play, to find the right places and roles for all his players — and it certainly helps having Gilgeous-Alexander, who was just about the best player in basketball this past season.
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“It’s an honour to coach him and every one of his teammates,” Fernandez said. “Shai was probably the MVP of the NBA and if he didn’t get it this year, he’ll probably get it next year. He’s relentless, he has amazing work ethic. He leads by example and with his voice and was a big part of our success last summer.
“We rely on him a lot. It makes my job a little easier. I have the best seat in the arena to watch him do what he does. I trust him. You have to let your great players play.”
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In early July, Team Canada travels to Las Vegas to take on the U.S. Olympic team, the 16-time gold medal champions. A team with LeBron James, Steph Curry and Joel Embiid.
Fernandez isn’t viewing this as a how-do-we-stack-up kind of game. He’s viewing it as a way to judge Canada’s pre-tournament conditioning.
“I want us to be the best conditioned team in the tournament,” he said.
“My priority is not winning that game. My priority is feeling good about the shape we’re in.”
Training camp begins on Friday. The Olympic tournament begins one month from now on July 27.
All of this is already on speed dial for Jordi Fernandez, the unknown who’s about to become known, no matter what happens to unfold here.
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