Derek Fisher has been under a lot of scrutiny the past year, and that scrutiny intensified when he was fired as the Knicks head coach Feb. 9.
Between his altercation with former teammate Matt Barnes about Gloria Govan (Barnes' estranged wife and Fisher's girlfriend) and a slump with the Knicks, Fisher has been tabloid fodder.
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"I want to make sure my voice is now heard," Fisher said in an essay written for Sports Illustrated . "I want to let people know that you can’t just make things up and get away with it. I want to set a few things straight."
Fisher clarified that he and Matt Barnes were never more than teammates on the Lakers for two seasons.
"During that time, we were teammates, and never had any issues. We never had any real relationship off the court, either. Our kids didn’t hang out, our families didn’t interact. There were no birthday parties. There were no post-game dinners. We weren’t friends, and we had no mutual friends."
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Fisher and his wife later separated, as did Barnes and his wife, Gloria Govan. According to Fisher, there was no sneaking around or lying when he began dating Govan.
"I don’t know what was going through Matt’s mind that day in October when he showed up unannounced at Gloria’s house, and started swinging. I didn’t retaliate. No one who was there did anything but try to get him to calm down, particularly because Matt and Gloria’s children were present. There was no fight.
"That’s it. There’s nothing more to what happened than that."
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Fisher insinuated it was Barnes who leaked the altercation to the media and that Fisher's integrity and character then came under fire.
The speculation continued throughout the season and well after Fisher was fired. Plain and simple, Fisher said his firing was due to the Knicks' rough record, not his personal life.
"At no time did anyone at that meeting express to me that stories about my personal life were distracting from the collective task at hand, or — more important — that any of my players had expressed to management that they had lost confidence in me as their coach," Fisher said. "Nothing remotely like that was ever brought up or discussed."