Put Derek Fisher vs. former Lakers teammates on your NBA playoff wish list

This needed to get done, and it got done. Derek Fisher is now on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

And “needed” means needed by everybody. Not just the Thunder, who needed it for basketball reasons. The NBA needed it, too, for must-see TV reasons.

It won’t quite be the same as, say, the possibility of Shaq facing Kobe from postseasons past or even the same as the national allure of seeing LeBron and the Miami Heat going home without a championship, again.

But Derek Fisher, serving as the wise old head for the young-and-coming Thunder, facing the team with whom he won five championships before they tossed him overboard last week?

You can skip that if you want to. Except that if you want to, you’ve lost your mind. Who knows, maybe you’re holding out for a revival of Lin-sanity in the playoffs. Good luck with that. Remember, it’s the New York Knicks.

The entire series of events that, officially on Wednesday evening, transported Fisher from the Lakers to the Thunder, couldn’t have worked out better for both teams. It enhances both teams’ chances not only of seeing each other in the Western Conference playoffs, but of seeing each other deep in the playoffs.

Granted, it’s still hard to envision that after Tuesday night, while the 37-year-old Fisher was still in waiver limbo. The Lakers face-planted on the road again, this time in Houston—the very team to which they had traded Fisher five days earlier—blowing a big lead and seeing Andrew Bynum get himself ejected in a display only slightly less juvenile than the one he enacted in the playoffs in Dallas last spring.

For what it’s worth, such losses of composure were something Fisher’s presence wasn’t preventing before. Can’t pin that on his absence now.

Still, what they lose in Fisher’s shared experience with Kobe Bryant on five title teams, they gain in the other aspects of play that Fisher, to be gentle, wasn’t helping with anymore. That makes for a not-very-fun dilemma for Bryant, by the way. He respects no one on the roster (maybe no one in the organization, at this point) more than Fisher. But right now, he’s in no mood for anyone to get in the way of his hunger for another ring while his window is still open.

Ramon Sessions opens that window more than Fisher does. At least, so the Lakers hope.

With Sessions, the Lakers’ average team speed went up about 20 mph. And the speed at which opposing point guards were going around them went down by about that much. No disrespect to Fisher intended. He probably knows it, too. He’s been in the league for 16 years.

The thing is, Fisher isn’t obligated to accept that verdict on his career. His now-former teammates have made it clear in various ways that while they appreciate Sessions, they’ll miss Fisher. Fisher, according to reports, has made it clear himself that he wasn’t happy with how his association with the team he’s identified with ended.

The Thunder, of course, don’t need him to start, any more than the Lakers still did. They need him to be the backup for Russell Westbrook that they haven’t had since Eric Maynor blew out his knee in early January. They could also use a guy who, besides Kevin Durant, can knock down a huge shot in a tight spot. Like with 0.4 seconds left. Remember that?

They also want him to be the guy who has been where they all want to be. In Durant’s eyes—as he told reporters before their game in Utah Tuesday, Fisher is “a Thunder guy as far as character and off-the-court is concerned.”

Fisher would also be a Thunder guy with a grudge.

The Lakers, meanwhile, would be the Lakers, except with a younger, quicker version of Fisher, who gives them a chance against point guards like ... well, like Westbrook.

Sessions, though, has none of the postseason notches Fisher has on his belt. He’ll have a little bit to prove, then, as well.

That’s if the Lakers and Thunder ... Fisher’s past and Fisher’s present ... the NBA’s past and its future ... actually meet in the playoffs.

If you’re not craving that matchup, you’re insane. ...

Or maybe just Lin-sane.