Remembering Derek Fisher's Impossible Buzzer-Beater Against the Spurs With 0.4 Seconds Left

You're not supposed to be able to catch a basketball, rise up, shoot it, and make a bucket in less than half of one second. The San Antonio Spurs were convinced of this. But 16 years ago today, Derek Fisher and the Los Angeles Lakers bent spacetime back on itself to deliver a stunning victory in Game 5 of the Western Conference Semifinals. It's still head-spinning stuff to watch even today.

D-Fish with the impossible dagger. Just 0.4 seconds. Zero-point-four. Al Michaels' disbelief still pulses through the screen even now.

One year prior, Gregg Popovich's Spurs were the team that won it all and prevented what would have been an incredible four-peat by Phil Jackson's Lake Show. Revenge was on their minds when the 2004 NBA Playoffs rolled around, and Fisher's stunner was the catalyst they needed.

In a blink of an eye -- quite literally - they snagged control of what had been a 2-2 series. Suddenly, when the dust settled in the subsequent Game 6, the Lakers were off to the Western Conference Finals. They'd prevail there as well.

Though the Pistons pulled the upset over LA in that year's NBA Finals, that shouldn't take anything away from Fisher's big moment, far and away the most famous highlight of his long playing career. Take a bow, big dog. You transcended the limits of time itself to shock every last basketball head on earth.