Randy Foye on Staples Center knife incident: “If something had happened with one of those kids, it would have been heart-breaking”

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There were three Clippers -- Randy Foye, Al-Faroqu Aminu and Eric Bledsoe -- warming up for today’s game against the Cavaliers when a knife-wielding man got on the court shortly before 11 a.m.

Foye was changing his shoe, and Clippers assistants Howard Eisley and Dave Severns were on hand too. Christian Eyenga was the only player on the court for the Cavaliers. There were also plenty of children around. Eyenga said a Clippers cheerleader shouted that a man had a gun.

‘That was crazy. ... Next thing you know, I look up, and it’s like somebody standing 15 feet from me with a long knife, a long shiny knife,’ Foye said after Saturday’s game.

‘I’m looking, like, ‘Is this real?’ I was in shock when I saw it. So I kind of got up and ran across the court, slipped a little bit. ... But it was serious -- because there were a lot of kids in there. We were thinking about the worst-case scenario if he would have grabbed one of them kids and held them hostage or something.

‘If something had happened with one of those kids, it would have been heart-breaking.’

Said Aminu: ‘It wasn’t like he was trying to hurt anybody. It was more like he was trying to get attention. He never came close to me, so I was cool. He got close to Eric (Bledsoe) though.’

Foye said he was running away with one shoe on and one shoe off. He said Eisley got away by jumping over the scorer’s table.

‘I looked up and Eric Bledsoe was right next to me,’ Foye said. ‘I think he [the armed man] ran right past Eric Bledsoe. His attention was on everyone else, like trying to get away from the guards on the bench.’

Officials said that the man -- who has not yet been identified by the police -- was mostly speaking gibberish. Foye heard him clearly, at one point: ‘I know what he was saying: ‘What are you going to do? Shoot me?’ That’s all I remember him saying.’

Foye said he had seen violence first-hand when he was growing up in New Jersey.

‘I’ve never seen nothing like that, up close, since,’ he said. ‘My tendencies of getting out of the way of harm kicked in. I just took off.’

-- Lisa Dillman