Jordi Fernández first set foot in New York in 2009.
“New York didn’t feel like the United States,” Mr. Fernández recalled thinking. “It felt more like the capital of the world.”
He said he grew up with a “city lifestyle” in Badalona on the northeast coast of Spain, in the Catalonia region. His entire family, including his grandmother, was packed into a 900-square-foot home. So it is not a surprise that Mr. Fernández, 42, feels at home in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn after one season coaching the N.B.A.’s Brooklyn Nets.
“Whether playing outside or playing sports or going to school, we were very close with our family, so we all lived close to each other,” Mr. Fernández said. Spending time out and about in New York, he said, “brings me back to how I grew up.”
The Nets hired Mr. Fernández in 2024 to take over a team reeling from a disappointing run with the star players Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden. That team was dismantled and Mr. Fernández was tasked with helping put the pieces back together.
The first Spanish head coach of an N.B.A. team, he studied sports sciences at the National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia. He knew he wanted to work in professional sports, but didn’t know in what capacity. Basketball was a natural destination: The former N.B.A. players Rudy Fernandez and Ricky Rubio used to play for Badalona’s club team.
In 2009, the Cleveland Cavaliers hired Mr. Fernández to be on the player development staff. He quickly worked his way up in the N.B.A. as a well-regarded assistant and coached the Canadian national team.
Now, he lives with his wife, Kelsey Fernández; their 7-year-old daughter, Lluna, and 6-year-old son, Bowie; and a French bulldog, Jagger, in an apartment building near Vinegar Hill. They have nine neighbors but plenty of privacy, and lots of windows with a view of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Mr. Fernández spent the last Sunday before the start of the N.B.A. season with The New York Times.
“I believe that to be good or very good at your job, you need to have some sort of balance in life,” Mr. Fernández said. “For me, my balance are my wife and my kids and my family.”
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
EARLY START On a practice day, it varies. Usually I leave the house between 5:30 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. so I can get a lot of work done when there’s not a lot of people there. I listen to the news from home and I work until we have a coaches’ meeting, which is usually around 8. And then I have some other work to get done to prepare for the next game. Between 1:45 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., I try to leave.
GAME DAYS Game day, pretty similar. Wake up between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. Go to the arena. And then I stay there the whole day. We have shootaround, so I work. We’ll have coaches’ meetings. And then the majority of the coaches, we stay at the arena because we exercise. We do a basketball workout. We run. We lift weights. And then we watch European basketball games. Or we have it on television and we all work.
I try to meditate for 10 minutes before a game. I follow the same routine, but it’s not crazy. It’s usually like: shootaround, workout, lunch, rest, work, media, meditate and then game.
OFF DAYS Whether they go to school or not, the kids wake up between 6 and 7. So me and my wife wake up around 6:15 a.m., try to get coffee before the kids wake up.
We make them breakfast. If they go to school, we make them lunch, then walk them to school, usually with the dog, and then after that we usually work out, whether my wife and myself go together or she does a workout class. If the weather’s nice, we’ll take the dog on a long walk through the piers because he needs to exercise.
EXPLORING Sometimes, we just grab bikes and we’ll bike to SoHo or take public transportation and walk around, grab lunch and then go pick up the kids. And then the kids right now have a lot of activities — tennis and soccer and basketball and gymnastics and dance — so I like to be present and go to those things.
My wife likes to be outside and walk. We walk around and maybe we grab coffee somewhere or grab lunch there. One of the first days we did this, we walked over the Manhattan Bridge and then we had lunch at Pier 17. And then we took the ferry back and then we grabbed the kids.
VINYL COLLECTION We have, in Dumbo, like, three record stores. They opened one recently. It’s called Vinyl + Thread. It’s a pretty cool warehouse, and it’s right by our house.
My parents played records from when I grew up, and then when I came to the United States and got my job in the G League, the head coach at the time was Steve Hetzel — who is my lead assistant now here — he was big into records. He had his record player in Canton, Ohio, when we worked together. I said, “Man, this brings me back.” A lot of memories of my parents and me growing up. I said, “OK, I’ll start buying records.” And he actually bought me my first record. I got a record player and then I built my collection from there. I think I’m around maybe four or five hundred now.
It’s hard to choose just two or three favorites, but I’ll probably go with Oasis’s “Definitely Maybe.” I’m a big Oasis fan. I went to two of their shows this summer since they’ve reunited. I went to the one show in Manchester, in their hometown, and the one in MetLife Stadium.
AFTER-SCHOOL PICKUP When the weather’s nice, they love going to Cadman Plaza. Nowadays, they have activities every day. Me and the kids do Catalan lessons when we’re together, at least once or twice a week. So they can learn more the proper way to speak my first language. I don’t speak English to them, so we do that, the three of us together.
SCREEN-FREE EVENINGS We make sure that we all sit together at the table at the same time and we can talk to each other. We cannot be looking at screens. We usually play a record. The kids play or draw, or whatever they have to do. Also having time to catch up with my wife. But those evenings, the kids go to bed at 7:30, so we usually eat around 5:30. My wife and I have a little bit of time to watch a show. We just finished “Mobland.”
Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.
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