Thunder’s new voice
The story behind Chris Fisher’s amazing journey to the NBA
Chris Fisher is unique, and not just because he’s one of only 30 team play-by-play TV announcers in the NBA.
While driving across the American West on the way to his American dream, Chris Fisher detoured to the Grand Canyon.
He’d never been before but had seen magnificent photos of Horseshoe Bend. So, last week a few days after convincing his traveling partner and father, Jim, to add some miles to an already long trek from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, they parked and looked at the sandy, sun-soaked trailthat led up a hill to the lookout.
“Everybody that walks up there looks like they got a ton of energy,” Jim said. “Then by the time they’re walking back, they’re gasping for air and looking for a bottle of water.” He glanced at his son. “You sure you wanna go?”
“We’re goin’.”
And go they did— despite the fact that every step was difficult for Chris. Every step of his life is.
On Monday, Fisher was introduced as the new TV play-by-play voice for the Thunder and became a rarity. Only 30 of those jobs exist. The chance of landing one of them is so, so slim. Then again, so is the chance of walking again after a spinal cord injury.
But Fisher defied the odds in that way, too. He was badly injured in a rollover car accident when he was in high school, damaging his spinal cord near the base of his neck and paralyzing him from the shoulders down.
Many doctors said he'd never walk again, and in those early days, it looked as though he might need continuous care the rest of his life.
"One of my MOs is not to be denied," he said when talking about his Grand Canyon hike but hitting on a much broader truth. "I don't want to feel limited." Chris Fisher grew up north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. Grew up loving sports, too. He played soccer and golf and snow skied whenever he got the chance, but he watched anything and everything. A pretty darn good life.
But then in October 2001 during his junior year at Cardinal Newman High in Santa Rosa, getting a ride home from a friend went horribly wrong. His buddy went into a curve too fast. The car rolledand flipped. Pancaked the passenger's side, too. Chris was in the passenger's seat. In the moments after the car stopped moving, he worried about what he was going to tell his parents. But then as he hung upside down, his knees pressed against his chest, he realized that he couldn't move his legs. Couldn't feel them either.
Doctors in the emergency room determined Chris had broken his neck and injured his spinal cordnear the C5 and C6 vertebrae.
What they couldn't determine, though, was whether the injury to his spinal cord was complete or incomplete. A complete injury would mean no motor function below the injury, or in Chris' case paralysis from the neck down, while an incomplete injury would mean some feeling or movement.
That's why the answers varied when Chris would ask his doctors and nurses if he'd ever walk again.
"Probably not," some would say.
"No," others would espouse.
But Chris held onto the hope that there was a chance. The 17-year-old was too naive to think otherwise.
"And I think it played into my favor," he said with a laugh, "because I never truly processed how significant
the consequences could have been, what the end result could've been. Pretty much since the night I got hurt, I had the mindset that of course I'm going to get better, of course I'm going to be able to walk again."
And yet, he wasn't completely unaware of hisdire condition. During his time in intensive care, he had a tube down his throat.
"If that tube comes out," he remembers a doctor telling him, "you're gonna die because you don't have enough muscles to breathe on your own."
He sighed deeply while recounting that moment earlier this week.
"You sort of dig in mentally." Chris Fisher spent the weeks after the accident largely in bed. He couldn't do much of anything on his own. Not getting dressed. Not eating. Not even going to the bathroom.
Then about a month after the accident, Fisher was able to move his right thumb. It was barely detectable. An eighth of an inch or so. Tiny movement. But it was a hugemoment— it meant his injury was incomplete. He might regain some feeling and some movement.
He might even walk. "I got a get out of jail free card," Fisher said.
The months that followed were not without their challenges. Fisher required nearly roundthe-clock care. He needed massive amounts of rehabilitation, doing physical therapy six days a week but working on something every single day.
He says he wouldn't have made it without the support of his family— parents, Jim and Leslie, and sister, Casey— and his friends.
But at the end of the day, Fisher had to make a decision. Was he going to push himself to regain as much independence as possible? Or was he going to always have to depend on other people?
"You make the best out of it or you complain and have self-pity," he said. "And I knew what decision I was going to make." Chris Fisher eventually resumed the life that his accident put on hiatus. He finished high school. He went to college at Southern
Cal. But even as he majored in political science, he dabbled in sportscasting. He called USC women's basketball games for the school's website. Work for the student-run radio station followed.
After graduation, Fisher decided to trek to Major League Baseball's winter meetings with the intention of finding a broadcasting job.
Darned if he didn't do it. He started with the Carolina League's Potomac Nationals, then moved to the Northwest League's Eugene Emeralds.
He continued calling women's basketball games for USC during the baseball offseasons, and eventually, that led to more basketball gigs. West Coast Conference games for Time Warner Cable. Pac 12 Network. Fox Sports. In 2010, he became the-play-by-play announcer for USC men's basketball games. Monday, he started as the new voice of the Thunder.
"You get to the point where you're ready personally and professionally to take on another challenge," the 33-year-old said. "At least that's been my mindset— to always challenge myself."
Fisher knows that this will be a big professional challenge, but he believes his accident, injury and rehab matured him. He had to grow up quickly, and now, he feels that it impacts how he handles himself.
"Not letting anything be too big," he said. "Nothing can top what I've been through."
Fisher still deals every day with issues related to his spinal cord injury. He is stronger on his right side but has better feeling on his left side; to give himself added stability when he walks, he uses a cane much of the time. He can't move his left hand. He can't feel hot and cold on his right side.
He doesn't talk about such things very often, but he's always willing to discuss them if asked, especially if the questions come from others dealing with spinal cord injuries.
He wants to advocate for what's possible.
He wants to provide hope where he can.
"Because there's just not a lot of people with spinal cord injuries who are out and about walking around,"
he said, pausing a second, "and calling NBA games." He chuckled. "I basically had to learn how to live with a new body."
He's not just living with it.
He's living in it. That trip to the Grand Canyon is just the latest
evidence of that. Fisher smiled as he scrolled through pictures from the trip on his phone. The view that he and his dad got to enjoy at Horseshoe Bend was spectacular, but so was the journey itself.
"If I can walk and get down there ... I'm gonna give it a try," Fisher said.
"I'll go down falling if I have to, but I want to see it.
"It was 100 percent worth it."