Derek Fisher: Guard's Absence from Rockets Reveals Complex Nature of NBA Life

Derek Fisher, Laker for Life.

Or so it seemed before the Los Angeles Lakers shipped him and a draft pick to the Houston Rockets in exchange for Jordan Hill in a shocker on the NBA's trade deadline day.

And really, that's how it still seems some 72 hours later with Fisher having yet to report to the Rockets, although it's likely that the team will simply buy out the remainder of his contract and send him on his way.

Why Fish has yet to show up in Space City is anybody's guess. Perhaps the prospect of the Lakers trading him away so upset him that he still can't bring himself to go. Perhaps his adversity to playing for a middling team like the Rockets is keeping him away from the airport. Perhaps he's doing this to spite the team with which he's spent 13 of his 16 NBA seasons.

Any and all of these possibilities—and whichever others you can come up with—don't and can't alter the reality that he's yet to so much as speak to the Rockets. Until Fisher shows up, we won't know why a man known around the league for his professionalism and his character would handle this situation as he seems to have thus far.

It's a tricky situation for any player to find himself in, especially one like Fisher, whose ties to the Lakers organization run as deep as they do. He was a first-round pick of the Lakers in 1996, Jerry West's choice to groom as a point guard alongside some kid he'd traded for earlier in that year's draft.

You know, Kobe Bryant, that kid.

Fisher won three titles as the Lakers' backup point guard with Kobe and Shaquille O'Neal in the early 2000s, left town to cash in on his prime with the Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz, and subsequently returned to LA in 2007 to be closer to his daughter while she underwent treatment for retinoblastoma.

In essence, Fisher's return had nothing to do with business. It was entirely personal—to help his family and return to his most beloved basketball family. Not surprisingly, Fisher's return coincided with LA's emergence from the dark days of Kobe's trade demands and Smush Parker at the point. 

Pau Gasol's arrival had plenty to do with that, of course, but it was Fish who brought a sense of calm back to the locker room, serving as both a leader and a buffer between the Black Mamba and the rest of the team.

And with that, the Lakers played in three straight NBA Finals, winning two titles along the way before the situation petered out in the playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks last year.

It was clear that the Lakers were due for a change at the point, that a 37-year-old Fisher had become a liability on both ends of the court, especially as a starter.

So the Lakers went out and grabbed Ramon Sessions from the Cleveland Cavaliers and in order  to unclog the impending logjam at point and/or offload salary and/or avoid the potential conflict of demoting a long-time starter, sent Fisher to Houston.

Where both parties involved had expected he'd be by now. After all, this is Derek Fisher we're talkin' about, the president of the National Basketball Players Association since November of 2006. If there's anyone who understands that the NBA is a business and that player movement is an integral part of that business, it's him.

Yet he hasn't seemed to have handled this situation in a business-like manner, in a manner becoming of the "true professional" that Derek Fisher is supposed to be.

And as disappointing as that may be, it also serves as a solemn reminder that, indeed, these athletes over whom we fawn, who we idolize and criticize with equal ease, are human after all.

Sure, Fisher—as a professional who's been traded before and seen the seedy underbelly of The Association for what it is as the union head—should be able to separate what's business from what's personal, should accept his fate and be on his way.

As far as we know, he hasn't, but is that really a bad thing? If anything, shouldn't we be celebrating Fisher's emotional attachment to his team?

That the man who's supposed to epitomize the NBA as "just business" loves the game, loves his team, and loves the city that's supported him for so many years?

We, as fans, invest so much of ourselves in our favorite teams, our moods and out looks hinging on every outcome despite the fact that we have no control over the outcome. Because of that, we expect the world of the players who compete for them, rightly or wrongly.

It should speak volumes of Fisher that he loves wearing the Purple and Gold as much as fans love seeing him in them.

In other words, Fisher's human after all. It's who he is, and a big part of what made him such a beloved and revered figure in the City of Angels.

It's also why he'll be so sorely missed, even by those same fans who understand completely why the Lakers had to make a change at point guard, who'd bemoaned and berated Fisher's performance on the court before expressing grief and shock at his departure.

Because to us, Derek Fisher was, is and will always be more than a basketball player, just as the Lakers and LA were more than a team and a city to him.

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