The Brooklyn Nets are hiring Sacramento Kings assistant Jordi Fernandez as their next head coach, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. Fernandez, just 41 years old, was one of the NBA's fastest-rising assistants.

After a six-year stint under Michael Malone with the Denver Nuggets, Fernandez joined the Kings as their associate head coach under Mike Brown before the 2022-23 season and helped lead their turnaround into a winning team. He is also the head coach of Canada's national team and led the squad to a bronze medal at the 2023 FIBA World Cup.

The Nets have seen quite a bit of coaching turnover in recent years. Kenny Atkinson, Sean Marks' first head-coaching hire in Brooklyn, was ousted during the 2018-19 season as the team transitioned from a rebuild into a contention window with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. He was eventually replaced by Steve Nash, but the Nets soured on him after a little more than two seasons. Assistant Jacque Vaughn took over from there, but he was fired in February after the Nets, expecting to be somewhat competitive this season, fell far below .500.

Now, Fernandez will join a Nets team in a somewhat transitional period. Durant, Irving and James Harden are gone. The Nets have a mountain of draft picks acquired by trading those superstars and a decent collection of young talent to develop in their place. But Brooklyn lacks a foundational star of its own now.

In theory, their approach to rebuilding the roster has been to preserve those picks and wait to trade them for a replacement star. Donovan Mitchell has been a frequently-rumored target, and his offense would pair nicely with defensive aces like Mikal Bridges and Nic Claxton. Bridges has two years left on a deal that is well below market-value, so that is Brooklyn's window to significantly improve the roster.

If the Nets can do so, that roster will be led by a new coach that had become highly sought after around the NBA. Fernandez interviewed for multiple head-coaching jobs last season, and his strong World Cup performance only improved his stock. Now, he gets his first chance as an NBA head coach.

If Sacramento’s happy hour scene is getting predictable, maybe an evening surrounded by zoo animals will spice things up.

On Thursday, the Sacramento Zoo at 3930 W Land Park Drive in Land Park will host its first happy hour of the year with music, food and drinks.

“Dance and groove to a fun mix of live music from local favorites,” the zoo wrote on Monday via newsletter to subscribers. “Get the group together, dance the night away, and enjoy the sights and sounds of the zoo at night.”

Northern California party band Cover Me Badd will take the zoo’s stage in April with a mix of hip-hop, 80s rock, 70s funk, 2000s tunes, country and current jams.

Northern California’s Jessica Malone Band and high energy ensemble Fast Times Band are also slated for the spring.

Nonrefundable tickets are limited, according to the zoo’s website, priced at $25 each ($20 for zoo members).

Bundled tickets to all three events are $60 ($45 for zoo members).

The social is from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday at the Sacramento Zoo.

“Don’t miss this unique, adult-only evening,” the zoo said.

The next events are scheduled for the same time on May 16 and June 13.

Eventgoers can choose from a variety of pub food and drinks for a separate fee on the night of the event, the zoo said.

Also on the list will be wine, beer, canned cocktails and nonalcoholic beverages.

No.

IDs will be checked at the door and “no one under 21 will be admitted” the zoo said.

This story was originally published April 16, 2024, 10:20 AM.

The Oakland A’s are baseball’s biggest losers. But their new temporary home — West Sacramento — is a winner.

No California city has had a better 21st century than West Sacramento. The municipality has grown in population and prosperity with striking speed, even as California has stagnated.

The A’s will spend 2025 through at least 2027 playing in West Sacramento’s minor league ballpark until its new stadium is built in their future home, Las Vegas. Perhaps their relocation will bring West Sac, as it’s often called, more of the notice it merits, especially in city halls and among state policymakers.

The city’s success is best explained through three paradoxes.

The first paradox: West Sac grew rich because it was so poor. Sacramento became a city in 1849, but West Sacramento didn’t incorporate until 1987. For most of the 20th century, it was an afterthought — an industrial town of seedy hotels, vacant lots and warehouses.

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All that kept land prices low, which made West Sac attractive as the region became more expensive. A first wave of development, beginning in the 1990s, focused on the riverfront and included the A’s future ballpark, which opened in 2000.

This brings me to the second paradox: West Sac achieved big success because it was small. A quarter century ago, it had just 30,000 residents and a median household income of $32,000. (Today those figures are 54,000 people and $87,000). The powerful unions, environmental groups and state agencies that often delay or block California projects had little interest in a poor small city.

So, the ballpark took just 19 months to build. Businesses found they could launch quickly. And while housing construction languished elsewhere, West Sacramento built market and affordable housing, as well as entire new neighborhoods, at some of the fastest rates in California. The small city also brought in large new retailers, most notably the Sacramento region’s first IKEA, which produced the sales taxes that West Sac could use for more projects and better services.

Such speedy development points to the third paradox: West Sac benefited because of its distance from and its proximity to the city of Sacramento.

The two cities are just across the Sacramento River from each other. But West Sac is a separate municipality situated in a different county, Yolo, with a mix of rural areas and smaller cities. Sacramento runs on constant political competition, which can distract from the slow and painstaking work of governance. West Sac has had the good fortune of stable political leadership for over a generation.

The embodiment of that stability was Christopher Cabaldon, a legislative aide and higher education administrator who first moved to West Sac after taking the wrong freeway off-ramp. He ended up serving on the City Council and then as mayor for more than two decades.

In a small community, he could move fast.

“We focus on results as opposed to process,” he told Governing magazine in 2019. “A lot of other communities are into community meetings and workshops and planning and task forces and consultant reports, and, no, that’s not us.”

In contrast to Sacramento, where the city government is prone to obsess about creating signature attractions (an arena, an aquarium), to draw visitors, West Sac focused on building the housing and amenities to attract more residents.

Its proximity to the state Capitol eventually became a draw. As California’s growing state government brought more people to Sacramento and affordable housing became ever harder to find, people took notice of West Sac, with its new homes, new neighborhoods and new restaurants. Many West Sac residents lived so close to the Capitol that they could walk across the Tower Bridge and be at work in minutes.

In 2014, West Sac was named the “Most Livable City in America” by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The honor only made West Sac more ambitious. In 2017, with more families moving in, the city devoted its growing revenue to West Sacramento Home Run, an initiative offering universal preschool and college saving accounts.

Ironically, the very same state government that helped West Sac grow also produces regulations that make it harder for California cities to grow. Now that West Sac is bigger, its leaders confront more obstacles and opposition. But West Sac remains a great counter-example of what California cities might do if they had more freedom.

The A’s decision to come to town brought public joy to the Sacramento region, where residents say they can’t wait to go to the West Sac ballpark and marvel at famous Dodgers and Yankees stars as they hit homers against the weak, and temporary, home team.

Of course, the real marvel won’t be the ballplayers, but the small city they’ll be visiting.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

April 14, 2024

Syndicated columnist

Joe Mathews is Connecting California columnist and California editor at Zócalo Public Square, an Ideas Exchange that is a project of New America and Arizona State University.

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Boos rained down from the Golden 1 Center stands on March 7. The Sacramento Kings were doing what they had done all season: play down to the level of their opponent, in this case, the cellar-dwelling San Antonio Spurs.

Such a reaction would have seemed foreign during the charmed 2022-23 season, when fans basked in the unexpected glow of the startup Kings’ first winning record in 16 years. Yet despite similar results in 2023-24, this season has felt slightly underwhelming to many fans.

Recent losses, injuries to key rotation pieces and a season-long difficulty finishing winnable games have tempered optimism heading into the play-in tournament. Fans such as Harrison Barley, 15, packed Downtown Commons before Sunday’s regular-season finale — a 121-82 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers — unsure of what the next few days would hold.

“I feel like they’re just the same as last year, (and) I feel like they should be better than last year,” Barley said. “It’s kind of a disappointment, but they got hit with some hard injuries at the end, so you can’t be too mad.”

Starting shooting guard Kevin Huerter is out for the season after dislocating his shoulder and tearing his labrum on March 18, while 6th Man of the Year candidate Malik Monk has missed the past two weeks since spraining his MCL on March 31.

Role-players such as Keon Ellis and Harrison Barnes have stepped up in their absences, but haven’t been able to shoulder the load entirely. Meanwhile, fans such as Pablo Bautista, a season ticket holder since the team played at Arco Arena, have raised their expectations beyond a long-elusive .500 record.

“With the fans, everybody expects good play (now),” Bautista said. “I’m sure everybody expects them to win the whole thing. I know I was one of the people that was like, ‘this is our year, come on, we’re going to do it.’ But as you guys can see, they’ve struggled in the later part of the year, and we’ll see what happens (in the play-in tournament). We’re struggling right now as it is.”

The Kings finished the season 46-36 (.561), just two wins shy of the team’s total in 2022-23, when they finished third in a loaded Western Conference. This year, they limped into Sunday’s finale having lost five of their last six and fallen to the back end of the play-in tournament as the No. 9 seed, with a match-up against the Golden State Warriors looming Tuesday night.

“I don’t know how it’s going to go,” Anthony Guttig, 23, said Sunday. “Obviously I’ve got hope because it’s my team, but I don’t know, man. It’s going to be a rough one for sure. But I think we can get it done. We’re a gritty team, put in a bunch of work.”

If the Kings advance past the play-in tournament, they’ll likely face off against top seeds such as the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder — all of whom Sacramento has beaten this season.

Yet the Kings might have made the playoffs outright — or at least earned a higher play-in seed, improving their odds of moving on — had they locked up a few more contests against weak opponents. Losses such as a Feb. 7 collapse against the Detroit Pistons, who came into the game 6-43 and were missing their two leading scorers, stings in retrospect.

“Losing games to teams like the Pistons and the (Washington) Wizards is not good,” Barley said. “This team beats so many good teams and loses to really bad ones. It’s really unpredictable, so you never know what could happen.”

Playoff basketball can be similarly surprising, and the Kings did drub the Blazers on Sunday to end the regular season on a positive note.

They sport a 2-2 record this season against the Warriors, their first play-in opponent. The winner of that game will play either the 8th-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, whom the Kings swept in four regular season games, or the 7-seed New Orleans Pelicans, who went 5-0 against the Kings.

With De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis still leading the team and Monk angling for an early return from his knee injury, the NBA should be on notice if the Kings make it through the play-in tournament, lifelong fan Jameson Malvesta said Sunday.

“The Kings can seriously be a dark horse in the playoffs, because even though they’re not as high-seeded as they were last year, they have a lot of really good players like Fox and Sabonis that can turn up in the playoffs,” Malvesta said. “They’re going to surprise a lot of people.

This story was originally published April 14, 2024, 3:03 PM.