A few months ago I was cleaning my room and found some paper cutouts that I made during my elementary school/middle school years of human figures that I used as targets for my bb gun. On each of these figures, there was the name of a certain person whom I despised and wanted to pump full of copper. The first was my middle school principal, the second was Ivan Drago, and the third was Derek Fisher.
Looking back, I can still list the reasons why I hated Derek Fisher. As a player, he was not a good shooter, he wasn’t terribly explosive or a great finisher. He wasn’t a flashy ball-handler, and he almost never dunked. Actually, I did manage to find this highlight video online of Fish throwing down, and some of them look pretty nice. Of course, this clip probably encompasses all of Derek Fisher’s career dunks, but that’s aside the point. Check out the video below:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefXiS_qmXQ
Instead of being known as a good shooter, clutch player, or a buff defensive menace, Derek Fisher back then was known as being energetic, dependable, and full of hustle. Those three adjectives don’t quite describe the coolest NBA players. Throw in the fact that any time he was in the game, that meant Nick Van Exel wasn’t playing, and it’s no wonder I didn’t like him.
Derek Fisher was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1974 and attended high school and college in Little Rock. Throughout his 4-year collegiate career, he averaged 12.4 points, 4.4 rebounds 4.2 assists and led the team in assists and steals each season. In his senior season, he averaged 14.5 points, 5.2 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game.
Fisher was selected by the Lakers in the 1996 NBA draft 24th overall to be their backup point guard behind Van Exel. Although he was selected to play in the All-Star Weekend Rookie Challenge, his season averages of 3.9 points, 1.2 rebounds, and 1.5 assists in 11 minutes of playing time with a 40% field goal percentage, 66% free throw percentage, and 30% three point field goal percentage were vastly underwhelming.
Throughout the next four seasons, Fisher’s stats and playing style didn’t really change. Even with the trade of Nick Van Exel (a moment even sadder than when Apollo Creed died), Fisher could never really crack the starting rotation. In the first four seasons of his career, Fisher never averaged more than 6.3 points, 2.4 rebounds, or 4.1 assists per game. In his fourth season, Fisher played backup to Ron Harper and won the first championship of his career.
During this time, I saw Fisher in two other television appearances. In the first, he had a cameo role in the TV sitcom “In The House” starring LL Cool J and Alfonso Ribeiro aka Carlton, from Fresh Prince. In the second, he appeared on MTV’s Spring Break, where a selected audience member engaged in a 5 shot free throw contest against Fish for a prize. The audience member made 3 free throws and beat Fisher’s 2 makes. Now that I think back on it, maybe Fish was being nice and letting the other guy win, but at that time I couldn’t believe that he sucked so much a normal person could beat him.
Next: The Fish That Saved LA