Fisher was asked about his mindset given the report about his altercation with Barnes and his reaction to it.
“So my state of mind is that we have a game tonight and nothing that I’ve experienced has anything to do with how we perform tonight. I’m completely focused and committed to the team, not distracted in any way. And that’s about it as far as my state of mind.”
Fisher said he addressed the issue with the team about two hours before tipoff.
“I wanted to make sure that before they were asked about it at least that they heard from me directly about my state of mind and how present I am,” Fisher said. “I’ve been through a lot in life and experienced a lot of things. And sometimes we go through things in life that we can or cannot control. I’m here, I’m focused. It’s not something that’s going to take me away from who we are and what we’re trying to do. And I assured them of that. The only way to do that is to go out and do your job, and that’s what we’re going to do tonight.”
Carmelo Anthony said that it was important for Fisher to discuss the apparent incident with his players.
“Yeah, it kind of caught everybody off guard. Nobody really knew what was going on. Still, nobody knows the details of what’s happening,” Anthony said after the Knicks’ 100-81 preseason game. “So as a team it was something amongst us to let him deal with his own personal issues, and us when it’s time to come in here and play basketball, we deal with that.”