Derek Fisher offers mild rebuke to Lakers’ management

Derek Fisher was back at Staples Center, talking to reporters near the unfamiliar walls outside the visitors’ locker room.

Exactly two weeks had passed since he was traded to Houston in a salary dump for seldom-used forward Jordan Hill, but Fisher didn’t crucify the Lakers’ front office. He offered only a mild rebuke for management’s failure in communicating after he was traded.

Fisher, 37, played almost 13 years for the Lakers. He negotiated a buyout with Houston last week and immediately joined the Oklahoma City Thunder after getting waived by the Rockets.

“Initially it was more shock than just pure disappointment,” he said of the trade. “I’ve always thought that there were different ways to handle trade and waiver-type situations where there can be some more communication, not necessarily far in advance, but enough to not have to find out from the mailman or at the post office that you’ve been traded. And I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case, but I did wake up and I was traded.”

The Lakers also sent Houston the first-round pick they acquired in the Lamar Odom trade last December. They were that serious about getting Fisher’s salary next season ($3.4 million) off their books after acquiring Ramon Sessions earlier on the day of the trade deadline.

Fisher called the trade “strange circumstances” but also said “it was fair for them to do what they did.”

He declined to specify what leadership vacuum might exist in the Lakers’ locker room now that the 16-year veteran was gone.

“I’m obviously close with everybody that’s still in there and it would be a disservice to them for me to start speaking from the outside looking in at this point,” he said.

He was averaging 3.8 points and shooting 22.7% in four games with the Thunder before playing against the Lakers on Thursday.

His time with the Lakers “far exceeds anything I could have imagined when I first moved here in 1996,” he said. “I’m extremely thankful for everything, and I’m looking forward to playing in front of them one more time, actually a couple more times before the regular season’s even over.”

Fisher switched from jersey No. 2 to No. 37 after joining Oklahoma City.

“Regardless of what I had been able to do, or help my teams do in the past, that number [37] seemed to be the number that trumped anything,” Fisher said of his age. “That number always came first before my name so I figured I’d just go ahead and put it out there for everybody to continue to use first.”

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Derek Fisher offers mild rebuke to Lakers management