Derek's postgame interview brought worldwide attention to retinoblastoma (Getty Images).

The two biggest plays of the night had come from the player with the heaviest heart.

“To wake up this morning and take my daughter to the hospital, not knowing if I was going to see her again, if the procedure’s going to go well, to her coming out of it and being well, and then flying back home and helping the team win a game. I think had I thought about it, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I was on auto pilot and it just happened,” Fish told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

After the game, he gave an emotional, heartfelt on-court interview, in which he talked about his family’s plight and his daughter’s condition and procedure.

“I didn’t know before I said it,” Fisher said, “but in the moment that I was saying it, I just felt that if I shared it, it would be helpful in some way.”

He urged a watching nation to become aware of this dangerous disease, and have children checked regularly, because the same could happen to them.

’’He has done more for the field, more for patients, than I have done in the last 30 years, of 50 lectures and 400 publications,’’ Dr. Abramson, said in an interview. ’’What he’s done has been enormous and profound.’’

Abramson told a story about two families from Jerusalem -- one Israeli, the other Palestinian -- who came to Sloan Kettering for treatment.

“Probably the only time they had sat in the same room,’’ he said. ’’When I asked them why they had come, their story was the exactly same: they had heard about the basketball player’s child.’’

Since that night in Utah, Tatum has received follow-up care in both Los Angeles and New York, and has become the joyful toddler her family hoped she’d be.

Some day, she’ll hear stories about her father’s courageous actions on that one night in Utah, and how his inspiring play and heroics brought not just an important victory, but impacted millions of lives around the world.