NBA Middle Names: Derek Fisher

We at No Regard spend a lot of time in our NBA knitting circles trying to figure out the human side of these players. Whether it's musing about their commutes to work, how much "Call of Duty" they play, or what their favorite snack food is, we like to remind ourselves that NBA players are nothing more than young men with enviable jobs. What better way to humanize our heroes than look up their middle names?

Derek Lamar Fisher

Lockout Update: Roger Mason

Roger Mason has no qualms sending text messages while Derek Fisher is talking.

2011 NBA Resolutions

2011 is here and here to stay, folks, and we're sure some of you are knee-deep in your New Year's resolutions. At No Regard, we believe that NBA players should be no different than the rest of us when it comes to making some much needed changes. We've found a list of some of the more popular resolutions and decided to apply them to some of the league's employees.

1. Spend More Time With Family and Friends: Carmelo Anthony

Well, it looks like things are finally shaping up. And by "things" I mean a complete demolition of three current teams in order to, once and for all, bring 'Melo to the NY/NJ region. It's not pretty, but it will be nice to just have this over with so that we can stop hearing one DOA rumor after another. So, 'Melo, if and when the ink is on the paper, make sure you take advantage of your return and call all those cousins and childhood friends from Red Hook that you haven't seen in years. They've been waiting for you. -Ain't

If You See Something, Say Something

IYSSSS is our semi-regular internet intelligence report, a liberal arts approach to following the NBA on the Web. E-mail us atjewsforjesusshuttlesworth@gmail.com if you've got any suggestions.

The Basketball Jones: We like Tyreke Evans. We like him a lot.  Frankly we're not sure if his bling (above) is a prank or a cry for help.  Either way, we're happy to join the speculation surrounding this misguided nick name.

True Hoop: Summer League always ends much faster than we ever expect it to. If you blinked anytime in the past two weeks, you probably missed a major stories from Orlando or Vegas.  Lucky for us, Kevin Arnovitz breaks it all down, giving us the Summer League that was.

FreeDarko:  At their best when attempting to explain what makes a player tick, FreeDarko takes on this year's Draft Bad Boy and Summer League Monster DeMarcus Cousins. 

Dime Mag:  People love lists and analogies, right? And people like baseball? Dime Mag attempts to compare some of our biggest NBA stars with guys who play baseball.  The results are hilarious and often batshit crazy.  Just go see who they think best compares to Derek Fisher.

Truth About It:  If you skipped over the True Hoop link because it involved the words Summer League, and that's not how you roll, check out this one highlight.  Remember the name  JaVale McGee come November, he's likely to make more than a few statement dunks this season.

Basketbawful: We've all seen this video before, but it just doesn't matter.

Flopper's Paradise

What do Cristiano Ronaldo, Derek Fisher and a beached flounder have in common? You guessed it: Their tendency to flop. After watching almost every NBA playoff game and now the FIFA World Cup, I've concluded that play-acting is extremely problematic to the flow and popularity of both sports. Soccer's way of combating feigning injury and over-exaggerating contact is by disciplining the athletes, in the case of a clear flop the ref is required to promptly hand out a yellow card. Roundball has no equivalent. The following presents two possible solutions for the NBA front office to consider that might stifle the growing, and certainly negative, trend of ballers doing their best Ronaldo impressions.

Stern could go the soccer route and hand out technical fouls as punishment for a flop. However, the line between a flop and a legitimate fall or foul is not necessarily black and white. Ballers are massive, freakishly large men moving at speeds and in capacities normal folk rarely get to see in person. Giving officials the right to hand out Ts whenever they believe a player is pretending could open up Pandora's box and cause serious controversies.

What about fines? Stern could create an "NBA Anti-Flopping" committee whose job it is to review tape after games on potential flops and determine if in fact the suspected party purposely play-acted on a given play. If it's clear beyond doubt that there was a flop, then hit their wallets hard. Thereafter, the more a player flops, the higher his fines get in the future. Eventually, if a certain number of fines were assessed, the league could suspend the serial "striped bass fighting for his life" impersonator for a game or two.

The latter solution appears to be the more effective method. The stigma attached with being tagged as a documented flopper might be enough alone to deter players. No doubt, street cred would decrease for the league's most fined floppers. Combine that with less dollars in their pockets and possible suspensions, and the Derek Fishers of the league might think twice before they fling their bodies on the hardwood after merely being breathed on.

Antiheroics

Derek Fisher's performance in Game 3 was inspiring. It inspired me to swear heavily, throw several things I was holding, and weep. That was Write on the Funny!

But seriously (ugh, sorry), Fisher turned in the kind of late-game superprowess that brings to mind the past exploits of Reggie Miller and Robert Horry. These are the kinds of players who (excluding Miller, to some extent) are not superstars, but who are almost more feared than the Jordans or the Kobes when there are less than three minutes on the clock. They are guys whose value is rarely thought about until they, time and again, come through in the clutch and give their team a spark that is hard to control and nearly impossible to counter. Fisher has the added impact of emotional appeal, best displayed by his fourth quarter entrance after leaving his ill daughter's bed a few years back and his overjoyed post-game interview on Tuesday. Even when talking about his own clutchness, he plays the role of Moral Orel.

The combination of this good-guy persona and the individual underdog triumph should make me love these players. Yet I often end up rooting against them more intensely than even the players who perform like this all the time. There are two major reasons for this, so far as I can tell.