Fisher provides Lakers the dagger during Game 4

ORLANDO -- All Playoffs long, he'd been called on to talk the talk to help the Lakers walk the walk towards a championship, contributing more with well-timed speeches than well-timed shots.

In Los Angeles' 99-91 overtime win in Game 4 on Thursday to take a 3-1 series lead in The Finals, Derek Fisher did both.

(Watch the replay at 12 a.m. Saturday on NBA TV.)

Trailing by three points with 10.8 seconds left, the Lakers inbounded the ball on their end first to Kobe Bryant, then a quick outlet up the sideline to Trevor Ariza, followed by a cross-court pass to Fisher, who took two dribbles before pulling up for the game-tying three.

"Everybody in the arena thought the ball was going to Kobe," said Andrew Bynum. "[Fisher] just pulled up and shot it, hit it and that was the end of it."

It was the end of Fisher's poor shooting on Thursday at least. Up to that point the 34-year old was 0-for-5 from behind the line.

It didn't deter him. Like Jimmy Chitwood telling coach Norman Dale, "I'll make it" at the end of Hoosiers, Fisher told his teammates during a fourth-quarter timeout to keep coming to him.

"He actually said he wasn't going to miss no more," said Shannon Brown. "Pau [Gasol] had kicked some out to him and he had missed them. With everybody sitting on the bench he was like, 'I'm not going to miss no more.' And he didn't."

"He went after that shot and he earned it," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

If his shot in regulation was the dagger, his three with 31.3 seconds left in OT to put L.A. up 94-91 was the machete.

"That was the one that would put us in a position to close out the game," Fisher said. It might have closed out the series too, as all 29 teams in Finals history to go up 3-1 have gone on to win the championship.

It's been an up and down postseason for Fisher. In the early rounds he was run ragged by younger point guards in Utah's Deron Williams and Houston's Aaron Brooks. In the conference semifinals his Teflon character was called into question after he was suspended one game for plowing through Luis Scola and drawing a flagrant-2 foul.

He finally had a break-out performance in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals against Denver, scoring 13 points and hitting key triples at the end of both halves, but for an encore in Game 2 he went 1-for-9 from the field and missed a potential game-tying three on L.A.'s final possession. Then in Game 3, Bryant credited a fourth-quarter speech when Fisher reminded the team "this is what it's all about," instead of his personal 41-point scoring binge, as the reason L.A. won.

"Fish and I have had a relationship where when we first got here, we were the guys that on back-to-backs would have to go and practice," said Bryant about Fisher, who was a Lakers' rookie with Bryant in 1996.

"A lot of times we were the only two there, so we ended up playing full-court, one-on-one basketball and we were almost fighting, literally, just because we were both competitive. From that point forward I just gained so much respect for him because of his competitiveness and his ability to hit big shots."

The Lakers' co-captains imparted that fighting spirit to their team, as Los Angeles was able to erase a 12-point halftime deficit with a spectacular 30-14 third quarter.

"We got aggressive, we just laid it all out there," Bynum said. "We stopped giving up open shots, stopped penetration said, 'Let's get back, man.' We were able to claw back."

During the Lakers' postseason run, Fisher's impact has come up an inordinate amount for a player who was only averaging 7.6 points on 38 percent shooting entering Game 4. Jackson recently opined that he would have his 10th ring already had Fisher not gotten hurt before the 2004 Finals, in which Pistons' guard Chauncey Billups dominated Gary Payton.

Fisher is a committed person. Committed to his wife, Candace, whose name he has tattooed on his ring finger. Committed to the triangle offense, even when Bryant is demanding the ball (Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw said that Fisher is the team's only player who truly runs the system correctly). Committed to his backups, Shannon Brown and Jordan Farmar, with whom he would have post-practice pow-wows to talk strategy with -- even after their minutes were starting to eclipse his.

And he's committed to staying as sharp as possible, even as his body ages.

"I've heard different versions of it," Fisher said. "Now it's age, before it was other things in terms of not being able to shoot or not tall enough or whatever the case was. I've always used those things as motivation to work even harder and try to be better than I was before."

People point to Feb. 1, 2008, the day L.A. traded for Gasol, as the day this Lakers group went from playoff team to championship contender. In actuality, that quest began on July 20, 2007, when L.A. re-signed Fisher after he spent two seasons with Golden State and one in Utah.

"Point guard is such an important position, knowing that Fish was coming back, that brings a lot of stability to your team," Luke Walton said.

Added Lamar Odom: "Derek brought a certain type of confidence because he had been a Laker before and won as a Laker before and it rubbed off on us."

When the game was over, Fisher went back to using his speech to send a positive message to both teams. In the locker room, he urged the Lakers to finish the task and reminded them what happened in the 2000 Finals: L.A. went up 3-1against the Pacers, and then lost Game 5 by 33 points. In his postgame comments at the podium, his first time speaking at the televised press conference all postseason, he defended the Magic's Jameer Nelson for not fouling him at the end of regulation when Orlando had a foul to give.

"It's just a tough play to make, to be honest, guys," he said. "As a player it's just a tough play to try to time up, split second, to foul a guy before he's in the act of shooting."

Fisher ranked his Game 4 performance above his split-second, miracle-shot game against San Antonio in 2004.

"I have a responsibility to my team that if I'm going to be on the floor, then I have to make a difference," Fisher said.

His game on Thursday night isn't the only reason Fisher is responsible for the Lakers being one game away from the championship.

NBA.com's Dave McMenamin will be covering the Lakers throughout The NBA Finals. If you have a question or comment for him, send him an e-mail. You can also follow him on Twitter.