Do you remember where you were?

Ten years ago today, on May 13, 2004, Derek Fisher made one of the most legendary buzzer-beaters in NBA history. With 0.4 seconds on the clock, D-Fish, then a member of the Los Angeles Lakers caught an inbounds pass turn and fired a game-winning fadeaway jumper to beat the San Antonio Spurs in a pivotal Game 5 of the Western Conference Semifinals.

Only a handful of events in life are so improbable, so unforgettable that they become engrained in detail in your memory. For basketball fans, D-Fish’s game-winner is on that list.

Though it may seem like just yesterday when Fish hit “Point Four” and bolted into the tunnel at the SBC Center in San Antonio, for some it was literally a lifetime ago.

“Ten years,” Derek recalled to NBA.com’s David Aldridge. “And I have an 11-year-old daughter. A lifetime, basically.”

Both the second-seeded Lakers and the third-seeded Spurs boasted incredibly talented rosters. And when it came down to that final shot, the floor was laden with future Hall-of-Famers.

For San Antonio: Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Robert Horry and coach Gregg Popovich. For L.A.: D-Fish, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, Karl Malone and coach Phil Jackson.

Derek’s shot wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the Spurs’ star, Duncan, making an equally improbable bucket on the other end. San Antonio’s silent assassin launched an off-balance fallaway jumper on the other end that somehow made its way through the net with 0.4 seconds left.

At the time, it looked like Duncan would walk away the hero. But Los Angeles called timeout and Jackson drew up a rather simple inbounds play. With less than half a second left, the Lakers knew they couldn’t pull off a broken catch-and-shoot, that the final shot would have to come inbounds and up in one motion.

Years later, in an exclusive video for his website, Derek explained the play, identifying Shaq as the obvious first option if open at the rim and Kobe as the No. 2.

And while Fish ended up as the hero, he tips his cap to Payton—who fed him on the inbound pass—for making the right call.

“Gary Payton never gets the credit he deserves,” Fish said of the infamous inbound. “A lot of guys, in that situation, would have forced the ball to Kobe, or forced it to Shaq, or thrown it to anybody else but Derek Fisher, with that kind of star power. So I always have to give GP some love for trusting me with the pass.”

While Payton, one of the greatest point guards in NBA history, trusted his teammate to hit the shot, Derek didn’t even quite trust himself after he released it.

“When I let it go, I felt like, man, that was too hard,” D-Fish recounted. “And it’s probably gonna sail over the basket. But about halfway towards the rim, I said, ‘Uh oh, we’ve got a chance.’ And that thing touched the bottom of the net.”

Then came the reaction. After the ball splashed through with the backboard lit up in red, Derek turned into a kid again. He didn’t run for his teammates—instead, he sprinted straight for the locker room, as he explained to Aldridge.

“The reaction, obviously, people still get a kick out of,” Derek said, “which is something I learned in high school. We used to go on the road in Little Rock, and when you won a road game, you had to leave the building pretty quickly in order to get on the bus and get home safely. That’s why I ran out of San Antonio as fast as I did.”

After the miraculous Game 5 win, the series went back to Los Angeles, where the Lakers closed it out in the sixth game. They then ran through the top-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves to earn a berth in the NBA Finals.

Unfortunately, the Lakers ran out of gas in the finals, falling to the Detroit Pistons in five games.

Falling short in the finals, Derek says, is the only downside of his historic shot. But while the whole story didn’t have its fairytale ending, D-Fish can still look back with pride at the shot as he shares in the moment with fans, fellow players and teammates.

“I’m often reminded at times by others what a special moment it was, people remembering very specifically what they were doing, where they were,” Derek recalled. “Even Russell Westbrook, who was a kid, obviously, at that point, remembering running out of his house in L.A., running down the street, just celebrating like he was on the team with us. And so when I hear others describe it, it brings it home for me, and makes me feel, like I said, mostly thankful to be on great teams, with great teammates and great players. A lot of people did a lot of work to help put me in that position to have a great moment. So, it’s special.”

RELATED ARTICLES

• Q and A: Derek Fisher (NBA.com, May 12, 2014)
• Familiar Face (Sports on Earth, May 13, 2014)