It has not generated much echo in the United States and the NBA, but for Spanish basketball it is undoubtedly a new milestone. Jordi Fernandezassistant to Mike Brown at the Sacramento Kings, became the first coach born in Spain to lead a team from the best league in the world as head coach. And he also did it by guiding his team to victory against the Toronto Raptors (123-124).
Fernández had to assume command after the expulsion of Brown, the Californian team’s head coach, when there were still more than nine minutes to go until the end of the third quarter and the score indicated a tight 69-64 in favor of the Raptors. In the end, the Kings emerged victorious by just one point, and the Spaniard attributed the win mainly to the good work of Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox, although he also blamed the magnificent reaction of the entire team after the expulsion of their coach.
“The fact that the coach fought so hard for his players has made the players respond. I think it has been a great collective effort. The assistants were calm and helped me a lot, as well as each one of the players,” Fernández explained after the game. «Personally I am proud, but for me the most important thing was to give the victory to Mike and the team. It was an incredible victory,” he added.
Born in 1982 in Badalona, Jordi Fernández trained at Joventut. Already as a coach, he came to the United States in 2009 to work with Mike Brown at the Cavaliers as a development coach. He had a great time in the ‘G League’ where he stood out leading the Canton Charge and promoted the group of Cavaliers coaches who won the title in 2016. He made his debut as an assistant coach at the Denver Nuggets, where he stayed for six seasons before leaving. become associate head coach for Mike Brown.
The game, played in Toronto, ended up falling to the side of the Kings (15-12, seventh in the Western Conference) due to their greater effectiveness in the last minutes, in which the Raptors (13-15, tenth in the Eastern Conference) They showed more deficiencies.
As Jordi Fernández pointed out, Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox were the main architects of their team’s victory. The former signed 21 points, 20 rebounds and 7 assists, while the latter had 27 points, 6 rebounds and 10 assists. In addition, Malik Monk contributed 24 points and made 5 of 10 triples.
Reappearance of Juancho
For the Raptors, who dominated on the scoreboard for much of the game, the most outstanding player was point guard Fred VanVleet, who scored 39 points becoming the top scorer of the game, although he missed an important shot from the three line in the last few seconds. Quite the opposite of what the Kings did, who cemented the tight finish on the three-point line, scoring four of six attempts in the last quarter.
In the Canadian group he reappeared Juancho Hernangómez after four games absent with a sprained ankle. In 24 minutes, the man from Madrid scored 5 points, with 2 of 2 on shots from two, 0 of 3 from the perimeter and 1 free throw converted from two shots. To that he added 5 rebounds and an assist.
