EL SEGUNDO -- Playing in Utah is always going to be a little different for Derek Fisher, but at least it's not quite so hurtful any more.
Which isn't to say he won't get booed when the Lakers play the Jazz in Game 3 of their first-round playoff series Thursday night.
"Yeah," he said Wednesday, before the Lakers flew to Salt Lake City, "but probably not as much as the first time I went back. I think there will still be some boos there, and I think it's transitioned, though, from more of a personal boo to, you know, 'You're on the Lakers.'
"I think people have had time to deal with my not being on the team and my family transitioning away from Utah. I think that's behind everybody for the most part. Everybody knows the story, knows the deal, and now it's Jazz-Lakers."
For those who need a refresher course on the details, Fisher rejoined the Lakers last season after one year with the Jazz. That year concluded with an emotional rollercoaster when his infant daughter, Tatum, was diagnosed with a form of eye cancer, taking him away from the team during the playoffs. (In the most dramatic moment of his Utah tenure, he returned from his daughter's treatment in mid-game and helped lead the Jazz to an overtime win against Golden State.)
After that season, he was released from his contract with Utah to relocate to a city better able to address his daughter's treatment needs and signed with the Lakers -- a move that didn't go over particularly well with Jazz fans, who booed him mercilessly when he made his return to Salt Lake City with the Lakers. It was a reaction the classy veteran guard didn't expect.
"It was shocking, it caught me off guard, it was disappointing," he said. "But between the first time I went back last season to the second time, there was a huge difference, just in the way I saw it, the way I felt it. I think I had come to grips myself with the fact that there wasn't anything else that I was going to be able to say or do, and even better, I don't have to feel obligated to try to convince somebody of why we made the decision we made. I think once I got to a place where I was OK with it, it didn't really matter how other people responded.
"I think that game was good for me, personally, just to have that experience and understand that this world is not created in a way where you can please everybody, you can do things that are going to be what everybody likes for you to say or do.
"So I think it was good for me to have that experience. And I think it took probably a couple weeks after that experience to gain some understanding in terms of me understanding myself and what I was feeling. And then from there, it's been really smooth in terms of feeling comfortable with what has happened and why it happened, and that life really has moved on in a major way."
That's also true for 2-year-old Tatum -- she turns 3 in late June -- whose cancer remains in remission.
"Every eight weeks, we still have to go through the exams and the scans and the MRIs, and each time we go back, as things continue to stabilize, the doctor stretches it out a little bit," said Fisher. "It starts from every three to four weeks to four to six weeks, to six to eight weeks. Now we're at eight weeks, and as long as that pattern continues, we'll get to about 12 weeks, and then when she turns 4, if things continue to stay where they are, we'll be past that red zone in terms of the chance of the cancer returning or cancer forming in the other eye."
The estimate is that his daughter has about 50 percent vision in her left eye, although they won't really know until she's old enough to explain to doctors what she can see. "It's all just from testing, lights and different stuff like that," he said.
In other notes from Wednesday's practice:
Fatigue: Center Andrew Bynum, in his sixth game back since being sidelined by a knee injury, scored 10 points, all in a little more than seven minutes to open the game. Phil Jackson was asked what happened.
"He ran out of gas, really," said Jackson. "And they double-teamed him. They came back and double-teamed him, he missed some free throws, had some things that just didn't continue to go right for him. But he gave us a great start. ...
"It's going to happen with him. He's going to have some lapses in energy. We've got to talk a little bit about his pregame work, too, because I think he's working a little bit too hard to get ready for the game, and I think it takes something out of him during the game."
Needing more: Jackson also said he felt the Lakers weren't getting enough out of the size mismatch Pau Gasol has enjoyed against the smaller Utah lineup with Mehmet Okur sidelined by injury.
"We're not doing very well getting the ball into him," said Jackson. "He just didn't have enough touches in the second half.
"Some of that (is that) he was on the bench. I kept him on the bench for a while. I know this is going to be a grind the rest of this series, so I wanted to give him a little bit of a rest while we had a lead. But we didn't have an opportunity to use him the way we want to. ...
"We went to some other things, and Kobe got going a little bit in the second half, and he dominates the ball when he's going that well. Some of those things just didn't happen and work out for (Pau)."