Jazz’s Derek Fisher Battles ‘The Nightmare’

The Nightmare always begins innocently. A scratch. A bump. A cough. You don’t want to baby your child by overreacting, by making the injury seem more than it is—scratch, a bump, a cough. Something twinges, though. Something tugs in that dark place at the depth of every parent’s heart. Let’s go see a doctor.

Too many parents know The Nightmare we all shared last week with Derek and Candace Fisher. Not specifically, of course. Every Nightmare is its own beast. My wife and I have our own. It began three years ago when I received a call from a neighbor while sitting on a plane on the tarmac at the airport in St. Louis. I was told our daughter, then just 7 years old, had been in an accident in our home, that she’d spilled hot chocolate on her and was on the way to the hospital with burns. Third-degree burns, we soon learned.

The next 10 days were The Nightmare. Our daughter’s fine now. The resilience of a child is a miracle, truly. No other word for it. For those 10 days, nothing else mattered. We have no recollection of anything but our daughter and the world of pain and recovery that whirled around her.

Like nearly everyone but the members of the Utah Jazz, I didn’t know the breadth of Fisher’s absence from Game One of the Western Conference semifinal series against Golden State. “Family illness” can mean anything—from mere concern to, well, The Nightmare.

It was not until after Fisher, making an emotional late-game entrance during Game Two, sparked the Jazz to a 127-117 overtime triumph that we learned the full magnitude of the Fisher’s Nightmare. His 10-month-old twin daughter, Tatum, had been fine one day. Then after Candace noticed something wrong with their daughter’s eye, a visit to the doctor became a cross-country journey to a cancer specialist in New York. The Nightmare was on.

The diagnosis was retinoblastoma, an eye cancer so rare no more than 350 children in the U.S. come down with it in any year. I’d never heard of it before last week when Fisher, just seconds following the end of Game Two, informed Fox broadcaster Pam Oliver of Tatum’s diagnosis and her condition on live television. He also had the presence to encourage parents to get their own children checked. (Tatum’s twin was checked and is fine.)

In time we learned Tatum could have lost an eye, or died. We also learned that she was spared surgery because Fisher suggested that doctors try a relatively new chemotherapy procedure, one so new it had not yet been written up in medical journals. Thankfully, it worked; Tatum’s condition improved. She’ll need to undergo more treatments, but it seems that The Nightmare just might be over.

Once Tatum was stable, Fisher flew back to Salt Lake City—with Candace’s permission, of course—for his emotional and triumphant return to his teammates. Last night he was again the both a catalyst and an inspiration. Playing on the road in Game Four, he scored 14 points in the fourth quarter to break open a close game and led the Jazz to a 115-101 win that gives them a 3-1 lead returning to Utah on Tuesday.

At 32, Fisher is one of those guys you know but you don’t. He owns three championship rings during his 11 NBA seasons, all won as a quiet but vital cog for the Shaq-Kobe (or Kobe-Shaq, depending on whom you believe) Los Angeles Lakers.

Sunday was Fisher’s 128th playoff game, and that experience has certainly been vital as this Jazz team seeks to forge its own identity beyond the Stockton-to-Malone era. But it may have been Fisher’s experiences off the floor in Los Angeles that best prepared him for these days—for The Nightmare.

In Los Angeles, Fisher grew as a Christian. This is what many of us didn’t know. He found a way to walk in faith even amid the temptations of Los Angeles and the life of a professional athlete. He relied on friends and learned much during his one season as a teammate with long-time Laker A.C. Green, who was long public about his faith, particularly his decision to abstain from sex until marriage—an idea beyond radical in the NBA. “You can be successful,” Fisher once told the blog, Sacred Hoops, “have a great career in this league and still walk with Christ. You don't have to give in to the system or do what everyone else does to be a good player in this league."

In recent days he has offered a very public testimony about how faith has guided him and his family, even knowing, he said, that some people get "offended" when others talk of their God. But after The Nightmare, Fisher knew that risk paled in contrast to the reward he and his family had already received.