Fisher puts family before basketball
By Kevin Hench
God bless you, Derek Fisher.
Class acts have been in short supply in the sports world lately.
One week Kobe Bryant is throwing teammates and management under the bus. The next Pacman Jones is formally charged. Then comes another distressing revelation about Elijah Dukes.
It's easy to blow by the Derek Fisher story in pursuit of more sensational fare. The class with which Fisher is coping with his infant daughter's cancer diagnosis is not exactly good fodder for sports talk radio. It's not a story you can secretly delight in. There are no villains.
But there is most certainly a good guy.
On Monday, the Utah Jazz granted Fisher's request to be released from his contract so he and his wife Candace could take daughter Tatum to a city with doctors specializing in treating retinoblastoma, the rare form of cancer that has been found in the 11-month old's left eye.
In his teary accession to Fisher's request, Jazz owner Larry Miller praised the point guard's leadership and toughness, two qualities Miller learned about firsthand after ripping the team in April.
Commenting on the team's 6-12 slide late in the season, Miller said, "We suck. Twelve out of the last 18. We suck."
Fisher wasn't having it.
"As far as my understanding of what a team is, what an organization is, what a family is, you don't throw people under the bus — at any time," he added. "When things are going hard, when you're struggling, you stick together even more. You support people, you encourage people, you don't tear people down when it's convenient to tear them down."
Fisher's leadership approach clearly worked. One year after missing the playoffs by three games without him, the Jazz came within three wins of the NBA Finals with D-Fish playing a crucial role.
Some sports sequences are so spectacular, that when you witness them, you feel absolutely certain you've seen the defining moment of that player's career. It simply couldn't be topped.
And so it was with Derek Fisher's catch-and-shoot with four-tenths of a second left in Game 5 of the 2004 Western semis. Fisher's ridiculous — and ridiculously clutch — catch, spin and fire (over Manu Ginobli) lifted the Lakers to a 74-73 victory and propelled them into the Western Conference Finals in six games.
But somehow, as unlikely as it seems, Fisher one-upped himself this spring.
Despite coping with the revelation of Tatum's diagnosis, Fisher was immense in leading the Jazz past the Golden State Warriors and into the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 1998.
Playing in the most hostile environment in the league, Fisher dismantled the Warriors in Oakland in Game 4 of the Western semis, scoring 21 points and dishing out five assists without a single turnover. He even shrugged off a nasty forearm shiver from a frustrated Baron Davis at the end of the game (talk about bad karma, taking a cheap shot at Fisher in this year's playoffs has to be near the top of the list).
For an encore, Fisher poured in 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting in the deciding Game 5.
What Fisher did in those 71 minutes on the court — with a heavy heart and worried mind — was more transcendent than the miraculous four-tenths of a second that had rightfully defined his career to that point.
And now Fisher has even topped that. The man who preached support and encouragement when times got hard on the basketball court is taking his own advice, putting support of his family above basketball.
His career is now defined by not letting his career define him.
He has stated that he is open to signing with a team in the city in which his daughter is receiving treatment, but he's also made it clear that his family is more important to him than hoops.
The NBA has been taking it on the chin for a long time thanks to the romantic recklessness of guys like Shawn Kemp. How nice to see a player who places family above all else. And how devastating to see that family having to cope with a medical crisis.
Thanks to the hard work of her father — make no mistake, Fisher has had to earn every second he's played in the NBA — Tatum will have access to the best medical care in the world.
Fisher knows that in this regard his daughter is lucky. Not surprisingly, even in the midst of this difficult time, he is thinking of the less fortunate and pledging to help other children so cruelly afflicted.
"There shouldn't be one child that has to lose a life or even an eye. If there's treatment out there, they should be able to get it," he said. "Some people can't afford to get it, some people don't have the resources, but hopefully we can help."
Tatum will have the best medical care. And now, thanks to Monday's decision, Tatum will have full-time access to the league's best dad too.
It's obvious that his daughter didn't come first when signing with the Lakers. Look what happened with Chris Benoit not spending enough time with his son. I've always respected Derek Fisher even with he was with the Los Angeles Lakers (Hoe Cakers) but fuck him for what he's done now.
