The Derek Fisher vs Matt Barnes episode in October 2015 was an ugly one. Barnes drove nearly two hours to his former Los Angeles home, where he reportedly got into a physical altercation with Fisher, his ex-teammate. Fisher and Barnes played together on the Los Angeles Lakers for two seasons, a time when they were friendly, and Fisher was now beginning a relationship with Barnes’s recently estranged wife Gloria Govan, once a star on the VH1 reality TV show Basketball Wives. Barnes and Govan were still legally married, with custody battles to come.

NBA players and fans quickly took Barnes’s side, ignoring his own record that includes a domestic violence arrest five years prior. His toxic, vengeful mission, however, was interpreted with righteousness, no doubt in part because of Fisher’s sordid reputation.

Fisher, currently the coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and a freshly minted executive at a predatory Denver-based entity called Luxury Asset Capital, has a rich history of not just personal betrayals, but professional subterfuge that undermines the collective bargaining power of his peers.