Thunder’s Fisher Endures Taxing Year, Gets Title Shot at LinesMaker

Thunder’s Fisher Endures Taxing Year, Gets Title Shot

OKLAHOMA CITY (NBA/Newsfeed) – A long, tax­ing year is com­ing to a famil­iar fin­ish for Okla­homa City Thun­der guard Derek Fisher.

It all started with him being front and cen­ter dur­ing the NBA lock­out as the pres­i­dent of the play­ers’ union. It grew more com­pli­cated when the Los Ange­les Lak­ers traded him away after he’d won five cham­pi­onships with the franchise.

Fisher signed on with Okla­homa City, and he’s three wins away from achiev­ing his ulti­mate goal of win­ning a sixth title. Only 13 play­ers in NBA his­tory have been a part of that many cham­pi­onship teams.

“What it would mean to win a cham­pi­onship means enough by itself with­out adding what has hap­pened before now,” Fisher said. “I think for this par­tic­u­lar team and group of guys, this par­tic­u­lar orga­ni­za­tion, there’s a lot of mean­ing that would come from us find­ing a way to win three more games. So, that’s pri­mar­ily my focus right now. And then for me per­son­ally, there are a num­ber of things I just won’t choose to reflect on or look into until after this is long done and I can step away from things for a minute.”

Fisher was heav­ily involved in the league’s labor dis­pute, engag­ing in the con­fer­ence room dis­cus­sions that even­tu­ally were able to save a sea­son that was in peril. His sea­son took an unset­tling turn when the Lak­ers unex­pect­edly traded him to Hous­ton and he decided not to go.

Instead, he looked around to iden­tify teams he thought gave him the best chance to win a title and he set­tled with the Thunder.

Even then, the tur­bu­lence wasn’t over. The lead­er­ship of the NBA Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion asked for Fisher to resign as pres­i­dent in April, and he refused while ques­tion­ing the union’s busi­ness prac­tices under exec­u­tive direc­tor Billy Hunter.

That dis­pute still looms as Fisher and the Thun­der pre­pare to play Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Sun­day night in Miami, with the series tied 1–1. Fisher doesn’t expect any res­o­lu­tion until later this sum­mer and he has done his best to keep his sights on the playoffs.

“All in all, for me, these are good prob­lems to have. When you think about how tough it is for peo­ple every day, this is not hard at all to be able to try to fig­ure out a way to be able to focus on play­ing bas­ket­ball,” Fisher said. “I’m healthy. My family’s healthy. So, at the end of the day, if these are the things that I have to deal with to be called tough days, I’ll take it.”

While Fisher wasn’t pleased with how the Lak­ers han­dled ship­ping him out, he made the best of the sit­u­a­tion by join­ing the Thun­der – who would even­tu­ally elim­i­nate L.A. in the sec­ond round of the play­offs. Fisher spent all but three of his first 15 years in the league with the Lak­ers, win­ning a hand­ful of championships.

Of the play­ers to win at least six cham­pi­onships, nine – includ­ing all-time lead­ers Bill Rus­sell (11) and Sam Jones (10) – played with the Celtics dur­ing their dynasty in the 1950s and ‘60s. The oth­ers are for­mer Fisher team­mate Robert Horry (7), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (6), Michael Jor­dan (6) and Scot­tie Pip­pen (6).

“This is his eighth NBA Finals in 16 years. As a player you wish you can get there once,” Thun­der coach Scott Brooks said.

“A lot of play­ers have never been there, and he has five championships.”

Fisher said he con­sid­ers Horry – who won titles with the Lak­ers, Spurs and Rock­ets – in a “stratos­phere all alone.” And he says he’s not going to rub it in if he’s able to win another title and sur­pass long­time team­mate Kobe Bryant, who remains his friend.

“To me, it’s kind of sacred ground,” Fisher said. “I’m not going there. Some peo­ple will but not me.”

Yet he still has some­thing to prove.

Once he signed with Okla­homa City, he chose the jer­sey No. 37 – the same as his age – to high­light that his advanc­ing years would not be a fac­tor. Brooks says he’s still mak­ing impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions on and off the floor.

“I’ve never been around a player that com­mu­ni­cates as well as he does with his team­mates, never have. The guy has an incred­i­ble knack for say­ing the right things at the right times,” he said. “He’s help­ing this team win this year, and he’s going to help this team win many years with all the things that they’ve took from him this past two or three months.”

Whether Fisher will remain with Okla­homa City remains to be seen.

“I’m for sure enjoy­ing my time here. I know for sure that I want to play beyond this year but from there, I haven’t put a lot of pres­sure on myself about think­ing about where that is and how that’s going to hap­pen,” Fisher said. “Next year is so far away until we fig­ure out a way to win that tro­phy. Once you win it, of course, the first ques­tion out of some­body here will be, ‘Can you guys do it again? And what’s going to hap­pen?’ That part comes after the job is done and right now we still have a big job ahead of us to try to fig­ure out how to win three more games.”

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NBA news see: Thunder’s Fisher endures tax­ing year, gets title shot.

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