Derek Fisher
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Derek Fisher was arrested Sunday on suspicion of drunken driving after the former NBA player and coach flipped his vehicle on a California freeway.
Fisher and his passenger, girlfriend and former “Basketball Wives” reality star Gloria Govan, were not injured in the early morning crash, the California Highway Patrol said.
The former Los Angeles Lakers player and ex-New York Knicks coach was driving on U.S. 101 in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles when his 2015 Cadillac veered onto the right shoulder while approaching an interchange. The car hit the shoulder’s concrete curb and guardrail, overturned and came to a rest on its roof, blocking two lanes of the freeway, the highway patrol said.
Officers discovered that the 42-year-old Fisher had been drinking and arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol after a DUI test, authorities said.
“We are beyond grateful that we are both OK and no one else was involved,” Fisher and Govan said in a joint statement Sunday. The two-sentence statement also thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers, but it did not address the drunken driving arrest.
Fisher, a father of four, has been dating Govan, the ex-wife of Matt Barnes, his former Lakers teammate. In October 2015, the two men got into an altercation at Govan’s Los Angeles home. Barnes was suspended two games without pay by the NBA for his part in it.
After his playing career ended, Fisher was hired in June 2014 to be the first coach for Knicks president of basketball operations Phil Jackson, under whom Fisher won five championships with the Lakers.
Fisher’s first season was the worst in franchise history with a 17-65 record, but the team played better early in Fisher’s second season before Jackson fired him in February 2016 with the Knicks in a 1-9 tailspin.
He has been working as an analyst for TNT as well as for Spectrum SportsNet’s Lakers coverage this season.
