Lakers Own This Block

Derek Fisher walked into a greeting card store Saturday for some last-minute Mother’s Day shopping when he was accosted by a fan.

“Great job this year,” said the fan. “I lost a bet because of you.”

The bet? That Fisher was not an NBA-caliber point guard.

“The best and worst compliment of my life,” Fisher said, sighing.

Less than 24 hours later, he walked onto the Forum court for a first-round NBA playoff game, and what do you know.

He was accosted by the Houston Rockets.

Who made the same bet.

You are not an NBA-caliber point guard, they told him, again and again, double-teaming Shaquille O’Neal, leaving Fisher as alone as those Dennis Rodman jerseys being peddled in the hallway.

The Rockets may spend all summer paying this one off.

Moments from stealing a victory and a series worth of momentum, Houston was run down by a longshot. Coming from the outside. Slogging through the mud.

The Lakers defeated the Rockets, 101-100, in a game that was dominated by their three biggest names, but determined by their smallest.

Houston challenged Fisher to beat them on offense by running players away from him. He shouted back with 20 points, one shy of his career best, 12 coming on roar-inducing three-pointers.

They challenged Fisher to beat them on defense by running the ball directly at him. He growled back with two steals in the final 1:18 that led to the four most important points of the afternoon.

Dumbest of all, they challenged him in front of his mother on Mother’s Day.

To say Derek Fisher loves his mother is an understatement along the lines of saying he merely likes to dive for loose balls.

Last year during the playoffs, he surprised her with a new car. This year, he flew her to Los Angeles from Little Rock, Ark., to see a new point guard.

Unlike the one who once backed up Nick Van Exel and Derek Harper, this point guard may finally be convincing people around here that he belongs.

“This was a big opportunity not just for the team, but for me personally,” Fisher said. “To have my mom there watching all this, it was an amazing thing.”

Nearly as amazing was Fisher’s sudden appearance on the scoreboard during the game, holding a microphone, the only Laker to publicly wish his mother a “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Annette Fisher was so happy afterward, while preparing to accompany Derek to a fancy dinner at a surprise location, she had only one request.

“I just wish Tuesday could be Mother’s Day again,” she said.

She was referring to Game 2, a game after a great game, a time when Fisher has sometimes struggled.

“I know how it works, I can come out Tuesday and go three for 16 and have everybody on me again, I understand,” he said. “This is just one game. But it was an important one.”

Actually, Fisher also gave his mother a new camera. But she has no photos of his late heroics. She was behaving like many others quivering in the Forum stands.

“I didn’t know where the camera was at that point,” she said. “I had my head down, praying.”

Her son was sort of praying too, as he crouched into his defensive stance with the Rockets holding the ball and a one-point lead with 28 seconds to play.

Kurt Rambis did not order the Lakers to foul. But Fisher had done the math, and was worried.

“We could end up getting the ball with just four seconds left,” he said. “I was surprised we weren’t going to foul. I figured we had to foul.”

He also figured he should share this with others. So as the clock painfully ticked below 10 seconds, with Scottie Pippen dribbling the ball, Fisher started shouting, “Take one, take one, take one.”

Kobe Bryant heard him, and stuck his hand in to foul Pippen just as Pippen slipped. The ball squirted free, and Fisher immediately thought the same two words he always thinks in these situations.

“Head first,” he said.

So there he went, to the floor, to the heart of the sluggish former Chicago Bull, wrestling the game right from him.

It was as if, to Pippen, the ball was just a decoration . . . while to Fisher, it was dinner.

Perhaps because it was.

He needed this type of performance, and some more like it this month, to establish himself as something more than a feisty middle reliever who, because of circumstances, has been forced into the starting rotation.

Caught between the memories of Van Exel and the promise of Tyronn Lue, he needs games like this to finally shut people up.

I too would have bet that Derek Fisher would not end up as the permanent starting point guard of the Lakers.

I too admit that I would be getting smoked.

Everybody knows Fisher plays hard, and behaves admirably, and is an outstanding role model for everything about basketball that is good.

But who knew he could place a headlock on a playoff game?

“I know a lot of people think I’m just hanging on by a thread,” he said. “That’s OK. This just fuels my fire. I work out this summer and I see your face.”

Right now, we can’t get enough of his.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.