Spotlight Finally Comes His Way, and He Delivers in the Clutch

The men who play with and coach Derek Fisher and the friends and family who support him couldn’t be happier that he was the one who made the buzzer-beating shot to defeat the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night. The thing is, he wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice to take it.

The only thing crazier than the ending of the Lakers’ mood-changing, series-tilting, future-changing(?), 74-73 victory, was the man responsible. It’s like the mild-mannered bookworm showing up to the prom with the head cheerleader.

Maybe the problem with Fisher was that he was just too nice. Nothing good ever seems to happen to those guys.

Fisher never made the big shots. Not that he had many opportunities.

“Maybe three times in eight years,” he said.

All of them failures.

One came right here in San Antonio, in the 2002 playoffs. With the score tied, Fisher tracked down a loose ball and forced up a jump shot. He missed, but Kobe Bryant snared the rebound and bounced back up for a layup over the Spurs’ frontline.

Remember the loss that preceded the Lakers’ late-season winning streak that year? That was on Fisher too. He missed a jumper that could have defeated the New York Knicks.

So that was his history. Sure, you could go back to college, to his days at Arkansas Little Rock when he was the featured player and had every opportunity to take and make the winning shots. But that didn’t equate to this, Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals, the Lakers four-tenths of a second away from being one game away from the elimination.

Tim Duncan had just made a high-arching jump shot over Shaquille O’Neal to put the Spurs ahead by one point.

Fisher couldn’t believe that the Lakers were going to have a loss to show for three dominant quarters in which they’d lead by as many as 16 points. But he held out hope.

The play the Lakers diagramed in the huddle called for the Lakers to throw a lob pass to O’Neal at the hoop, or look for Bryant curling around the outside. Fisher figured one of those two things would happen. Only 10 seconds earlier on the game clock, Bryant made a jump shot that put the Lakers ahead by a point. Maybe he would throw in another one of those miraculous three-pointers like the one he made in the season finale in Portland.

“I definitely had no feeling that it would be myself,” Fisher said.

He doesn’t do game-winners. He comes in, plays a little defense, makes the occasional three-pointer and leaves the heavy lifting to the other guys.

That was his role again for most of the night. He had scored six points, with a steal and drew three charging fouls that accounted for four of the Spurs’ 18 turnovers. Another performance to be overlooked, in this case by Devean George’s 16-point outburst, the Lakers’ fourth-quarter collapse, Duncan’s big shots or Bryant’s lead-changer.

Then Fisher and Gary Payton made eye contact, Fisher dashed toward Payton on the left sideline, and Payton threw his inbounds pass to him, near the Spur logo about 18 feet from the hoop.

“As soon as he came off the ball, when he picked for Kobe, they jumped at Kobe and I saw him wide open,” Payton said. “I looked at him, gave it to him, and he turned around and made it.”

“Tim made an incredible shot himself. That was redemption for us. Fish bailed us out.”

It looked as if this was going to be the defining shot of Duncan’s career. Then the Quiet Storm was eclipsed by the perfect storm, a serendipitous combination of events. Because Fisher is left-handed he could launch his shot in one continuous motion, like a pitcher delivering to home plate. Also, the Lakers got every bit of those 0.4 seconds. The Spurs contend the clock started too late and filed a protest.

League rules mandated that the officials review the shot, but replays showed indisputably that the shot over Manu Ginobili left Fisher’s hands before the clock expired. Fisher didn’t want to stick around to find out. He ran off the court as the buzzer sounded, then paused in the hallway amid a group of emergency medical workers to watch a replay on a television monitor. Fisher, who attends chapel services before every game, said a quick prayer.

The referees signaled the shot was good. A victory for the Lakers, and for Fisher’s long hours of work.

After practice most days he takes about 150 more shots, with his brother Duane Washington rebounding. He usually ends early warmups before games by firing turnaround three-point jumpers similar to his game-winner.

Everyone in the locker room loves Fisher, one of the steadiest, most dedicated players on the team. Bryant finally caught up with him, hugged him, said his name over and over, then hugged him again. Fisher’s brother and Duran McGregory, his right-hand man, were so overcome with emotion they could barely speak.

The last two games were a circle-around-the-campfire bonding experience, a realization that everyone can get along. Game 4 was a giant billboard reminding O’Neal and Bryant that Los Angeles is big enough for both of them, that 48 minutes is plenty of time for each to excel and share the spotlight.

Game 5 was a more subtle lesson that even two players fighting for minutes at the same position can share. When the Lakers signed Payton to a free-agent contract it meant Fisher lost his starting job. But when Payton struggled to fit into the offense and wasn’t the defensive solution, he lost his fourth-quarter playing time to Fisher.

Yet there they were, on the court together, combining for the final play. It was Payton’s game-high seventh assist.

And Fisher’s first winning shot. A new career high.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.