From Badalona to Brooklyn: Jordi Fernández honored by hometown with highest civic distinction

Badalona spent eight months waiting to celebrate Jordi Fernández at home.

The delay ended Sunday inside the Zorrilla Theatre, where the Nets coach stood before family, friends and members of the basketball community and accepted the highest civic distinction his hometown can bestow.

Fernández was officially named an Adopted Son of Badalona, becoming only the fifth person to receive the honor. He was presented with the Venus of Badalona and an honorary necklace during a ceremony built around a journey the city helped launch long before it stretched across the Atlantic.

The day also featured two screenings of From Badalona to Brooklyn, a Nets documentary tracing Fernández’s personal and professional path. One was free to the public. The other concluded the evening ceremony, allowing the people who watched him begin his life in basketball to gather and celebrate where it has taken him.

The Badalona City Council unanimously approved the distinction in November 2024, citing Fernández’s career and his role in raising the city’s international profile. His NBA obligations prevented him from returning for a tribute during the season, so Mayor Xavier García Albiol traveled to Barclays Center instead.

Albiol presented Fernández and his family with a replica of the Venus, a Roman marble sculpture associated with the city, and the distinctive necklace reserved for the honoree.

Fernández understood the rarity of the distinction.

“They gave me an award that only five people [have gotten] have in my hometown and it’s probably a city with a lot of years, right, very old city, and being one of five is an extreme honor,” Fernández said after the announcement in November 2024. “We’ve had a super accomplished swimmer with more gold medals in the Olympics than anybody else, singer, an actor and one of the first mayors in the city, and to get this award means the world to me, just to represent my city, and not just for me, but also my parents. They still live in Badalona, my friends.”

He returned home at a pivotal stage of his Nets tenure.

Brooklyn signed Fernández and his entire coaching staff to multi-year extensions earlier this summer, backing the group after two demanding rebuilding seasons. Fernández has gone 46-118 while managing constant lineup changes, injuries, movement between Brooklyn and Long Island and, most recently, the NBA’s youngest roster. The Nets also asked him to develop a group featuring a league-record five first-round picks from the 2025 draft.

The losses were part of the assignment. So was keeping the locker room connected, holding young players accountable and building habits strong enough to survive outcomes when progress offered little immediate reward.

The extensions affirmed Brooklyn’s belief in the foundation Fernández and his staff built through those conditions. The next phase will bring different expectations as the organization begins turning its draft capital, cap flexibility and young talent into a competitive team.

Badalona’s honor reached further back. Fernández was born in the city on Dec. 27, 1982. He began playing basketball there, then began coaching there before starting a career that included assistant coaching stops with Cleveland, Denver and Sacramento. Internationally, he worked with Spain, Nigeria and Canada, leading the Canadian men’s national team to bronze at the 2023 FIBA World Cup and coaching the country at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

On April 22, 2024, he became the first Spanish head coach in NBA history when Brooklyn hired him.

Yet the city’s hold on him predates every résumé line.

Badalona has developed generations of players and coaches, giving Fernández both his introduction to basketball and his first place within it. He spoke about Raúl López, Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernández, players whose careers also became part of the city’s basketball identity.

“Being the basketball town that it is and me starting to play basketball there, starting coaching basketball there,” Fernández said. “All the great players that came from that city or that were developed there… So, being part of a city that creates all these basketball players and coaches. It’s pretty cool.”

Sunday’s ceremony celebrated how far Fernández traveled without treating his departure as a severing. His career belongs to Cleveland, Denver, Sacramento and now Brooklyn.

Its beginning still belongs to Badalona.

“And everything I can do to represent and now that I’m honored this way means a lot to me by my city,” Fernández said.