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Is there a chance he signs here? Wow, how awkward would THAT be?
He asked out of his contract and the Jazz agreed. He will leave almost $21 million in salary on the table, which was due to be paid to him over the next three seasons.
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http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2924068
SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Jazz guard Derek Fisher was released from his contract Monday to care for his 10-month-old daughter, who has cancer.
Fisher and his wife, Candace, said they needed time to search for the best treatment for their daughter, Tatum.
"Basketball is not a priority. I don't have plans to retire ... I would enjoy playing the game, but there are a lot of things to consider," Fisher said at a news conference Monday.
Basketball is not a priority. I don't have plans to retire ... I would enjoy playing the game, but there are a lot of things to consider.
Fisher at times fought exhaustion trying to balance basketball and his daughter's welfare. Once, in May, he spent a day at a New York hospital, then flew back to Utah for a Western Conference semifinal game against the Golden State Warriors.
Tatum was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a cancerous tumor in her left eye. The danger is that it could spread to her brain or the rest of her body.
Tatum's twin, Drew, has no signs of the condition, which is one reason why Candace Fisher thought the light was reflecting oddly from Tatum's left eye. The Fishers took her to a few doctors before a pediatrician at the University of Utah recognized the problem.
Only 350 cases are diagnosed each year in North America, said Dr. A. Linn Murphree, director of the retinoblastoma program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, who is not involved in the Fisher case.
In most cases, patients lose the eye rather than undergo chemotherapy, but there are exceptions, Murphree said.
Is there a chance he signs here? Wow, how awkward would THAT be?
In other articles it says he's going to look to play in a city near where his daughter needs to get treatment, after they find the best facility for that. Maybe in NY or NJ.
Good luck to him and his family.
Just beat me to it.
And best wishes for Derek Fisher, his daughter, and the rest of the Fisher family.
Oops, there I was searching the NBA forum for this and I found out it's here.
Prayers to DFish and his daughter.
Last edited by tsb2000; 07-02-2007 at 10:51 PM.
I have never seen this before. Can anyone else think of another situation in which this has happened ? Does that free up money for the jazz or will it count against the cap ?
Last edited by tmtcsc; 07-02-2007 at 09:20 PM.
As far as cap numbers goes, I think they're simply free from the contract and free from the number.
But good luck and best wishes to Tatum and the Fisher family.
Wow and what a family man he must be to leave all that money on the table to take care of his daughter. A lot of athletes would not have done that, he is truly a good person, good luck Derek.
I don't believe so, he wasn't waived. Most of the time when a player is released by a team both sides want something...money. The player is unhappy with his situation, but is still guaranteed so much money. While he wants out of the negative situation, he wants at least some of the compensation he feel his team has obligated themselves to pay him. On the other hand, the team is usually seeking to free up a roster spot as well as some salary. Generally some agreement is reached where the player leaves and receives partial payment for the time he was contractually bound to fulfill but did not. This is called a buyout, and whatever amount is agreed upon is then paid to the player and counts against the team's cap figures.
In the case of Derek Fisher is sounds like he made it clear to his team in Utah that he would be unable to play for them next season because of these issues. Judging by his obvious character, I imagine Fisher demanded nothing in return from the Jazz despite the 21M he left on the table. Props to him.
With this possible extra $6-7M, Utah just became a much nicer FA destination.
I'm just guessing that Fisher is the kind of guy who has done smart things with the money he's earned so far, so the financial needs of his family are well taken care of even if he never earns another penny playing basketball.
I'm hoping that all this is just to get things settled emotionally. last I heard his daughter was doing well.
god bless you Derek Fisher.
Hope you can have a happy ending to whatever happens.
My heart litterally aches for this poor guy.
best of luck to derek and his daughter
*thinks back to 2004 wcsf game 5*
Makes sense. Hopefully NJ and not NY. Like the Knicks organization, but Zeke is an idiot imo.
I feel sympathy for his situation. It must be tough to be an NBA player with a sick kid, as Robert Horry can attest. I hope everything turns out okay for her and for Fisher. Two issues:
1. I think it's great that Fisher, Public Enemy #1 in S.A., is getting heartfelt props from Spurs fans.
2. If by chance the best eye cancer treatment facility in the world were in San Antonio, and he moved here for her treatment, and she got better before the beginning of next season and Fisher decided he wanted to play for the Spurs, how would everyone feel about that? Horry was a different story because he only did good things for us in his immediate past before joining the team (Game 5 of 2003 WCSF). But what about Fisher? How would the fans react the first time he checked into a game? Would they boo? Would they cheer? Would their heads explode because they just couldn't physically handle the unbelievable absurdity? What if he spent the rest of his career in S.A., played really well, and was given a retirement video montage on the Jumbotron? Would they show .4 along with the rest of his career highlights? I REALLY want to see this happen, just because it would be the most amazing study of the human psyche ever.
In his press conference he said there were 6 or 7 NBA cities that had medical facilities where they could receive care. NY, Houston, LA, Boston, Memphis, maybe Philly would be some. This is a really tough situation. Fisher's other child is at some risk since some retinoblastomas are heritable with increased risk in twins so monitoring by experts is critical. Fisher is a class guy and hope this has a very happy ending.
No way I'd boo.
I can't speak for other fans, and I'm certain there'd be some people who would, but did they want him to just grab the ball and not try to make the basket?
While it sucked to watch him hit that (clutch, luck, whatever) shot, you want the guys that do that on your team.
If the situation you bring up happened, I think the majority of Spurs fans would embrace D-Fish as Utah fans did when he came in the second half that first night.
good luck to the Fishers in finding excellent medical care for thier daughter. i can;t even imagine being in that situation.
major props for putting family 1st, as it should be.
Speaking of which, if this doesn't make you cry, I don't know what will:
http://www.roberthorry.net/articles-02.htm
No place like home
Los Angeles Times, 05/22/02
by: Tim Brown
The parking lot at the Pediatric Therapy Center in southwest Houston is full, drive-around-the-lot-looking-for-a-space full, like the mall at Christmas time.
The PTC does a brisk business in all seasons.
The children, even the older ones, hold tight to their mothers' hands without embarrassment. When they leave the shade of the lot, many involuntarily lift their faces to the sun, which is warming in the late morning, headed to nearly 90, with a light breeze.
For all of the pictures of animals on the walls and the cartoons on the televisions, for all the smiles and encouragement from the therapists and doctors, this place is hard work for the children who walk in, or are carried in.
Ashlyn Horry used to sit in the back seat of her mother's car and refuse to get out. Then she would start to cry, and so would her mother, and there they'd be, Keva Horry pleading, Ashlyn Horry refusing, while other mothers in other minivans stopped behind them and wondered if they were coming or going.
Those were the moments when Keva Horry wondered too.
"This is life," she said without regret. "I'm dealing with it."
Ashlyn is 8. Her father, Robert, plays power forward for the Lakers. On Monday night, Robert had 20 rebounds in Sacramento, where the Lakers lost Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
On Tuesday afternoon, Ashlyn is standing frightfully near the top of a four-rung ladder. A physical therapist holds her around the waist, and while the ladder teeters, she hands her a stuffed ball. With help, Ashlyn pushes the ball with two hands over the front of a plastic yellow hoop, and the ball falls through, lands on a blue mat and rolls across the floor.
"She scores!" the therapist cries. "Yeah!"
Across the room, Keva Horry claps. Ashlyn throws back her head and smiles. Her eyes joyously turn to slits and her arms and legs go stiff. When she opens her eyes, Ashlyn finds her mother.
Keva picks up the blue ball and rolls it back, her first rebound of the afternoon.
"There's a pride now because I'm seeing things the doctors didn't expect her to do," Keva says. "That gives me hope."
As the Horrys understand it, Ashlyn, their first child, was born without part of her first chromosome. They've never asked for the name of what she has, because it has never seemed important. She cannot yet speak or walk or eat, and there is no guarantee she ever will.
"One doctor told me it's a freak of nature," Keva said.
Ashlyn spent her first six months in the hospital, and she has been back often.
She can cover ground with the help of a four-wheeled walker, but it's a dicey transport without brakes. She leans forward and the walker rolls and suddenly she's nearly at a full run down the sidewalk, sending her parents after her with a mix of amusement and terror.
Ashlyn eats mostly through a tube in her stomach. An IV stand sits in a corner of her lavender-colored bedroom on the first floor of the family's home, beside her bed.
For three years she had a tracheotomy, allowing her to breath. Complications arose, as they often did then, and Ashlyn had her epiglottis—the flap that covers the windpipe during swallowing—removed, making eating a challenge.
Half of Tuesday's two-hour therapy session at PTC was spent in a tiny back room, where a kind woman named Judy Boshart dabbed baby food from a Dixie cup to Ashlyn's lips.
When Ashlyn swallowed or simply tried, she would get as reward a song or two from a nearby tape recorder, and Miss Judy would call her "Sugar Bear" or "Boo" and blow soapy bubbles and ask Ashlyn to pop them. So, Ashlyn sat in a wooden chair, vanilla pudding on her lips, jerking her head away from a plastic spoon, listening to Barney sing, "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"
Boshart pulled her face close to Ashlyn's, and rested her own cheek on the top of the little girl's head as Keva looked on."Ashlyn's a people person," she says. "She loves people. They don't always understand. But she doesn't care."
Boshart understands, and Ashlyn seems to know that. Boshart called Ashlyn's ailment "a neurological syndrome that mimics cerebral palsy" in some regards.
The prognosis, she said, "Guarded. Somewhat guarded. It's been so touch and go with this baby. She was so sick."
The little girl might never become what others are.
That's OK.
Others become what she is, joyfully.
Keva Horry sat in her television room Tuesday afternoon as workers, with ladders and extension cords over their shoulders, continue to plod through the two-story Mediterranean-style home in Houston's posh West Chase neighborhood.
There are pea s in the yard.
"Not ours," Keva says. "They belong to the community."
Apparently, they like the Horry's place best. Robert and Keva had it built, and have been in it for about a year. The home is stunning, even set against the other grand and gated homes on the same leafy street.
On the television, turned to the channel that brings up nine security cameras in the house, Camron, 3, plays with a babysitter in segment four. Palm trees wave in the front yard in segment five. Ashlyn, exhausted from her therapy, sleeps in segment one. She often falls asleep on the way home.
The room is quiet and bright. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame a large backyard, which has a pool, a wooden jungle gym, a basketball court and a pool house. When Ashlyn and Camron play in the yard, Keva sometimes will stand in this room, behind those windows, and marvel at what her little girl has become, the ability she has to change people.
"She just kind of brings everybody to her level," Keva says. "Like, ' o, this is what it's really all about—happiness.'"
Keva is pretty in a Jasmine Guy, Southern-girl way. She's like Robert in that she is easy to smile in the light moments and quick to shrug in the difficult ones. She cries some, such as when Robert leaves Houston for Los Angeles for his NBA season. She met Robert when both were attending Alabama. She grew up in Tuscaloosa, Robert in nearby Andalusia, and they share the same subtle drawls.
Keva had never seen someone so tall and thin, nor met someone as easygoing. She dated the high-profile athlete—despite her better judgment, she said—and five years ago they wed, three years after Ashlyn was born, two years before Camron, a normal child in every way, was born.
At that moment, Camron walked into the room, held up a new pair of Nike sneakers and said, "Like Ko-mee Biant!", Kobe Bryant being his second-favorite Laker. He is his father in miniature, complete with the big eyes and high, hollow cheeks. He attends a preschool that feels like Disneyland's Main Street.
Robert isn't around much during basketball season. The Lakers get to Houston twice a year and the family comes to Los Angeles occasionally, to a home in Marina del Rey. Moving the family to Los Angeles isn't an option. It's too vast, Keva says. The Horrys made their home here when Robert was with the Rockets. And moving would mean leaving the therapy center where Ashlyn has been going since she was 2. There are pictures of him all over the house, and he calls several times a day, Tuesday telling Keva on her cell phone as she drove home from physical therapy, "I wish I was there with you." She said, "I wish you were here too."
"This is Robert's favorite room," Keva said, swinging open the door just off the TV room. "I'm not allowed in here, so don't tell him I showed you."
She laughed and dragged a hand across a black velvet-lined pool table. There are half a dozen video games against one wall, a wet bar in the corner, and a movie theater through a side door. Framed NBA jerseys are leaning against a wall, waiting to be mounted.
She thinks about him often.
"It's like when you're first starting to date somebody all over again," she said. "I still get the butterflies. I do. I get nervous, like, 'Do I look OK?' Really. I still cry when he gets on a plane, when I drop him off for the season at the airport, I'm boo-hooing all the way home. It's been going on for so long now. If it stops, I'll start to worry.
"It gets very lonely. My children are my life. And I miss my husband. I love him dearly and I am extremely proud of him. I want him to be happy."
The truth is, there are times when Robert Horry feels badly for Ashlyn.
He admires her courage and loves her determination, but those things won't allow her to chase her little brother, or catch fireflies in a jar. When her tiny cousins race each other into the backyard for one of the swings, Ashlyn sometimes sits nearby, staring.
"There are bad days, like on the Fourth of July, when we have my brother's kids and her sister's kids," Robert said after practice Wednesday in El Segundo. "They're like kids, running around. You can tell she wants to do what they're doing, but can't. Those are the days I feel bad for her."
It doesn't last too long, because the doorbell always rings again.
"Everybody who knows her, they love Ashlyn like she's their child," he said. "When people come over, they're like, 'Where's my baby? Where's Ashlyn?' They get on the floor with her and hug and kiss on her as much as she can stand."
Keva is not sure about the bad days."She's happy all the time," she said. "She doesn't know any different. That's great, and it's a peace for me. This is all she knows. She's happy, and I want to keep it that way."
The sun has passed over the top of the house, and shadows have fallen on the living room couch, where Keva reads a children's book to Ashlyn and Camron. Though he has been forbidden to eat a cookie so near suppertime, Camron returns from the kitchen with crumbs stuck to his mouth, which Keva instantly notices.
Ashlyn is blissful beside her mother, listening to her voice and staring sweetly at the pages. She tries to hug her brother, who pushes her away.
Unbowed, Ashlyn pulls him closer. He groans and Keva laughs and kisses Ashlyn.
It is life. And they are dealing with it.
"I don't know what the reason is just yet," Keva said. "I do on a daily basis try to figure it out. It's not a 'Why me?' thing anymore. It used to be. It was very hurtful for the first year. I know her little life has a purpose. She has a destiny like everybody else. Maybe she's here for me. Maybe it's for Robert. Maybe that's it.
"The thing is, I never felt like the weight of the world was on me. You just do it. Before I knew it, we were here."
It's not a bad place. Ashlyn brings them little hardships and she brings them huge joy. Maybe she doesn't know it, but they're sure she does. They choose to believe she does.
"She kind of does that on a daily basis," Keva said. "Milestones. The little accomplishments that, for her, are huge. It happens every day."
How in' cool would it be to have these two in silver-and-black?
I'd LOVE Fisher in San Antonio.
A lot of guys talk "family", but how many actually act on it? He left $21 mil on table--I've never heard of that. Incredible!
Derek Fisher has been my favorite player in the league for many years now. When i found out that his daughter had this condition my heart was really saddened for him and his family. I really truely hope that his daughter pulls through this.
Derek is a complete class act, and he is definately showing that to him family comes first. I wish his family nothing but the best and my prayers are with them. I also do hope he suits up for a team next season.
I can't imagine how hard it is to walk away from $21 million. Then again, I also can't imagine not wanting to spend every day with my kid if I had to deal with the real possibility of him being gone in a year. For one time in my life, I'm rooting hard for Derek Fisher.
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