SELLERS: Derek and Candace Fisher
LOCATION: Hidden Hills, CA
PRICE: $6.995 million
SIZE: 9,406 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms plus guesthouse
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: It looks to this property gossip like lionized retired professional basketball player-turned-pitifully unsuccessful professional coach Derek Fisher is having his lavishly appointed mansion in the guard-gated Hidden Hills enclave in suburban Los Angeles shopped around off-market with an asking price of $6.995 million. A quick dip into property records indicates Mister Fisher and his now estranged wife, Candace, acquired the thoroughly landscaped, 1.13-acre spread in June 2009 for $5.5 million, and online marketing materials that we, in all honesty, inadvertently turned up show the 9,406-square-foot sprawler — let’s call it a glammed-up neo-fangled Country Colonial in the loose vein of celebrated vernacular architect Gerard Colcord — was built from the ground up in 2007 and provides five bedrooms and seven bathrooms plus a one-bedroom and one-bathroom poolside guesthouse that also includes a living room and kitchenette.
Anyone who knows this property gossip for more than two minutes knows we know about as much about professional basketball as a newborn kitten knows about driving a speedboat. Still, it doesn’t take but 40 seconds on the Internet to find out Mister Fisher — a five-time NBA champion who spent 12 of his 18 professional seasons dribbling, passing and shooting for the Lakers — has been catnip for all the sports blogs and tabloids since last spring (2015) when, as Missus Fisher claimed in court documents dug up by celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ, her sports star husband “blindsided” her with divorce papers shortly after their 10-year wedding anniversary. It was only six or so months after that, in October, the 6’1” former point guard was widely reported to have gotten into a physical kerfuffle with former Lakers teammate Matt Barnes. So the story goes, notoriously hotheaded Mister Barnes was not at all pleased that Fisher, still legally married to Candace but “long-separated” and living on opposite coasts, had begun a romantic relationship with Barnes’ estranged wife, Gloria, from whom Barnes had filed for divorce earlier in the year. Barnes confronted Fisher at a backyard barbecue at Gloria’s house and, though Fisher claims Barnes “started swinging,” he also says neither he nor anyone else fought back and that, ultimately, “There was no fight.” It was merely, according to him, a private disagreement unfortunately played out on the public stage. Whatever the situation, in the early days of February of this year (2016), the poop really hit Mister Fisher’s backboard when, after 1.5 disastrous seasons of categorical losses as the head coach of the New York Knicks, D-Fish was unceremoniously fired by Knicks president Phil Jackson. That brings us current with the back story, so let’s get back on track with the real estate matter at hand.
We don’t personally care for grandiosely proportioned foyers that smack a person across the face with an unabashed eagerness to impress guests and FedEx delivery people. But, as anyone who follows the L.A. real estate scene is well aware, gigantic foyers are quite popular in Hidden Hills mansions, and we can take as evidence the cavernous, foyer at chez Fisher. The double-height space has dark-stained and exceptionally high-gloss chestnut floors that run throughout the house, taupe-painted walls with extensive architectural moldings, doorways capped with impressive cantilevered entablatures, a gently curved staircase with sophisticated wrought iron railing, and a sparkly chandelier that looks to this property gossip like a double-stacked pair of torch-singed cotton balls floating in a crystalline waterfall. Formal living and dining rooms — the former with vaulted and wood-beamed ceiling and the latter with a no-doubt brutally expensive designer chandelier that looks like somebody spent a lot of time to bedazzle a collection of twigs with crystals — are joined by a darkly paneled library/office and a second, also darkly paneled room that listing photos show done up as a children’s play room. Informal family quarters run along the rear of the residence and include an immense family room with fireplace, a roomy informal dining area, and an unequivocally colossal kitchen with two work islands, an integrated semi-circular snack bar, and slab marble countertops on a combination of milk and dark chocolate cabinets. High-quality appliances include warming drawers, double ovens, and a glass-fronted stainless steel fridge/freezer that all by itself retails for more than ten grand, about as much as a California minimum wage worker earns in just over six months of full-time work, before taxes, according to the calculations we made on our trusty bejeweled abacus. But we digress.
Listing details show there are two en suite guest bedrooms on the main floor and two more en suite family bedrooms on the second floor along with a major league master suite composed of over-sized sitting room with French doors to a private terrace, separate bedroom with raised ceiling, his and her closets, and a spacious, entirely beige-toned bathroom with double vanities and a jetted tub set into a windowed bay. A vast flagstone terrace runs along the rear of the mansion and incorporates an outdoor kitchen and dining terrace with fireplace. Just beyond the swimming pool and spa there’s the aforementioned poolside guesthouse and, next to that, a similar and almost equally sized dormer-roofed structure that houses a two-stall stable and tack room.
Reports from last year suggest that the erstwhile Fishers also maintained a New York City apartment, which would certainly make sense since Mister Fisher’s also erstwhile coaching job was in New York. But to be honest, and not for looking, we didn’t turn up a stitch of digital evidence they own anything in the Big Apple. Perhaps they do and maybe they rented. We just don’t know. And, anyways, tabloid reports on the couple’s split indicate Mister Fisher cleared out of said apartment sometime around the time he surprised his wife with divorce papers.
Listing photos: The Agency
