Los Angeles Sparks coach Derek Fisher receiving deserved recognition
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Thursday 29 August 2019 11:34, UK
With a playoff spot assured and the roster taking shape, Los Angeles Sparks coach Derek Fisher is receiving deserved recognition, writes Huw Hopkins.
Los Angeles Sparks head coach Derek Fisher failed to make much of a dent in the NBA coaching ranks with the New York Knicks and his tenure was mired in controversy. Yet, some coaching knowledge was bound to have rubbed off on him while winning five titles with the Los Angeles Lakers during his lengthy playing career. He just needed the right situation.
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When Sparks GM Penny Toler hired Fisher, she said to Double Clutch: "When you have a veteran team, the coach needs to come in with a lot of credibility and Derek definitely has a lot."
However, with some players injured, others at EuroBasket, one dealing with legal troubles, and all of them learning a new system - whether they were new to the team or not - it took some time for Los Angeles to develop cohesion.
It wasn't necessarily the veteran-laden squad he was first promised to start the year, but Fisher and the team leaned on 2016 league MVP Nneka Ogwumike and the Sparks floated around .500 for the first few weeks of the regular season.
When two-time MVP Candace Parker returned from injury, things remained average as the team continued to fiddle with a rotation that probably has too many bigs - including Maria Vadeeva, who wasn't even with the team until mid-July because of international commitments.
Ogwumike wasn't putting up massive numbers. She was turning it on in games when it mattered and managed to keep the team afloat. There were some heroic performances from Parker when she returned - including an 18-point, nine-rebound, three-assist, four-steal, two-block classic in a win over the Las Vegas Aces in June.
However, when they weren't on top form, the team received a boost from Chelsea Gray.
The All-Star averaged a solid 13.9 points, a flashy 4.7 assists, and a tough 3.2 rebounds during the first 10 games of the year. Over the course of the season, Gray has improved those numbers to 14.3 PPG, 5.6 APG and 3.9 RPG respectively.
Known as the 'Point Gawwd' for her exciting passes and the ability to make clutch plays, she has formed a great pairing with Ogwumike and kept the team ticking along in the same way.
Other heavy rotation players included Nneka's sister, Cheney Ogwumike, as well as Riquna Williams, before she left the team for the best part of a month due to outside legal issues.
Beyond that, Fisher has played four players fewer than 15 minutes per game, and their numbers will dwindle further going into the playoffs. Each of them had less than three years of experience coming into this season: Marina Mabrey, Kalani Brown, Alexis Jones and Vadeeva (with short-term contract help from Britain's Katie Samuelson).
The exception to Fisher's little-experience, low-minute rule is Sydney Wiese.
Completing her third season, Wiese has proven to be quite the defensive pest, and is averaging a shade more than 21 minutes per game. The 24-year-old wing is being developed as Alana Beard's understudy, because the 38-year-old can no longer play a heavy rotation. Beard's responsibilities will likely increase during the playoffs, but it will be Wiese's contributions during the regular season that will get them there.
Third-year wing Wiese sits roughly in the middle of the league pack in terms of defensive rating. She is often asked to guard the best perimeter player or ball-handler on the court, and will even take on some bigs and give them hell on occasion.
While her official defensive rating is average, it still sits ahead of Beard, and when you take away those who are averaging fewer than 20 minutes and have played in no more than 25 games, Wiese rockets up into one of the most reliable defenders in the league.
Neither Wiese nor Beard will care about arbitrary or situational statistics, because when the moment comes, they can shut down nearly all players in tight points during the game. And this character trait is likely to be appreciated by another who knew how to step up at the crucial moments: Fisher.
The former Laker made a name for himself in three straight championship runs, but perhaps his most famous moment came in 2004, a year Los Angeles failed to win it all. With 0.4 seconds left on the clock, Fisher drained a clutch shot to beat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the Western Conference semi-finals.
His current star forward Parker wasn't quite in college at that time and Beard had not long started. But no one on this roster - or anyone in the WNBA - will have been a professional basketball player at that time.
Some of the younger players will only remember seeing him in the twilight of his playing career with Dallas or Oklahoma City, or failing as a coach in New York. However, some of the older Sparks will remember the 2009 and 2010 championships, when the venerable leader supported Lakers' superstar Kobe Bryant to each win their fourth and fifth NBA titles.
Perhaps that is why the veteran players have such great respect for him, and maybe it's why the team stuck with him despite the slow start.
With the Sparks, Fisher has found himself in the right situation, galvanising a number of good and great players to form a title-contending team.
It might have taken longer than he or LA planned, but with four win-streaks of three or more games this season, the team is clearly one to be reckoned with, and Fisher might be putting a coach of the year season together.
While the league-leading Washington Mystics got the better of them in the Sparks' last game, the season is far from over, and one thing Fisher has proven is that you cannot count his teams out until the very final buzzer.
Watch the Los Angeles Sparks take on the Indiana Fever live on Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Mix late on Thursday night (midnight).
