Fisher Still Has Heart, but the Beat Goes On

It took him about four-tenths of a second to find it.

It was Sunday, about 2 a.m., in the Bay Area home of a Los Angeles son.

Derek Fisher had just returned from an eighth straight loss with his Golden State Warriors, a team beneath all hope, a team beyond all relevance, a champion out of his mind.

What happened? Those three rings, where did they go? Where did he go?

“I was really down,” Fisher said. “I really needed to appreciate some of the things I had done.”

He knew just where to look.

In his office, on the wall above his desk, there is a blown-up photo of his game-winning shot for the Lakers with .4 of a second remaining in Game 5 of the 2004 Western Conference semifinals against the San Antonio Spurs.

It was a shot that will live forever in T-shirts and testaments and wherever they are talking Lakers. It was one of the two biggest shots in the biggest era in team history.

Fisher sank into his desk chair and soaked it all in.

The feeling lasted only as long as that shot.

Thirty-seven million dollars doesn’t buy what it used to.

He turned to his wife, Candace.

“Losing stinks,” he said.

*

It was corny, but it’s spring, and it’s the Lakers, and I couldn’t help it.

When I shook Derek Fisher’s hand during another return visit to Staples Center on Tuesday night, it just spilled out like one of those loose balls he was always grabbing.

“I miss you,” I told him.

“Thanks,” he said, laughing. “I get that a lot.”

Especially now, during playoff time, when the shadowed Laker became the strongest Laker.

For all of Fisher’s eight years here, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were the headlines, but he was the heart, a steady beat that often kept the locker room from imploding and games from disintegrating.

That heart popped out to his sleeve when he made that game-winning jump shot that essentially finished the Spurs and sent the Lakers toward the NBA Finals two seasons ago.

And then, nearly as quickly, Fisher was gone.

With the sports world crowded around the Laker front door to watch the departing O’Neal and Phil Jackson, Fisher slipped out the back while nobody was looking.

On the same day Kobe Bryant shouted he was staying, Fisher whispered that he was leaving.

Bryant phoned Fisher immediately after his news conference to beg him to stay.

“But a couple of hours earlier, I had just told Golden State that I was coming there,” Fisher said.

If he wonders what would have happened if Bryant had reached him earlier, he won’t say.

But you know he does.

What if Bryant’s muscle could have convinced the Lakers to increase their three-year, $16.5-million offer? What if Bryant could have talked the Lakers into making Fisher the starting point guard, a position that wound up going to Chucky Atkins?

As it was, Fisher said he had no choice.

The Warriors not only offered him an astounding six-year, $37-million contract but also promised that he would be the starter.

“I know people aren’t going to believe this when you write it, but the main thing wasn’t the money, it was the change in my role,” Fisher said. “I had spent eight years jumping back and forth from the bench. I was ready to run a team. The Warriors were going to give me that chance.”

The Lakers saw Fisher differently. They saw him as the consummate role player. He wasn’t the rhinestones, he was the glue. And, while an invaluable ingredient in today’s NBA, glue doesn’t sell for $37 million.

“It’s hard for me to say, but Derek did the right thing,” said Mitch Kupchak, Laker general manager. “When a player gets an offer like that, you have to take it.”

And then, as often happens in these cases, the offer took him.

The offer grabbed Derek Fisher around the neck and dragged him through two years of losing like he has never lost, plopped back on a bench he thought he had escaped, placed him in front of a TV set during playoffs that always included him.

Speedy Claxton, then newly acquired Baron Davis, supplanted him as the full-time starter. He is averaging a career-high 13.2 points this season, but he’s also probably leading the league in sleepless nights, once not leaving the locker room until 12:30 a.m., another time tossing in his hotel room until 6 a.m.

“I’m not looking back, this is an important experience to me as a man, learning more about myself, learning how to deal with a different kind of adversity,” Fisher said Tuesday evening, flashing his trademark smile.

And for four-tenths of a second, you almost believed him.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.