Derek Fisher says daughter is ‘doing great’

Several months after leaving the Utah Jazz to focus on the health of his daughter Tatum, 17-months, Derek Fisher, 33, has found himself a new basketball team — which also happens to be his old basketball team — in the Los Angeles Lakers.  Tatum was diagnosed in May with retinoblatoma, a rare eye cancer, and Derek says he doesn’t regret his decision to walk away from three years of guaranteed salary with the Jazz.

It was a very tough decision because the only way I could deal with it was to say to the Jazz, ‘Look, I’m willing to walk away from this contract in order to find the best situation for my daughter and my family.’ 

It was difficult because in sports, especially at 32 years old when you’ve worked hard to establish a certain level of success and have a contract in place, you don’t want to just hand it back, but things that I felt between myself and my wife and my family, that it was a decision that I had to make. That basketball could wait for a while. So we feel great about our decision because our daughter’s doing well, and we know that going forward, we’re in a city with qualified doctors who can take care of anything that might come up for us.

Tatum’s illness is under control, said a cautiously optimistic Derek, adding that his daughter is "doing great."

Cancer is always day-to-day, so as long as she still has her eye and the tumor, even though it’s dead right now, cancer has a mind of its own sometimes. It’s still something that we’ll need to manage carefully, but today she’s doing great.

Derek and his wife Candace have three other children, including Tatum’s twin brother Drew. 

Source:  HoopsWorld