Fox Was Trying to Show Fight

Forward Rick Fox, who was ejected from the tail end of Game 4 after two intentional fouls on Cliff Robinson, broke his silence on the matter before Game 5, saying that he had grown frustrated by both his sparse playing time and especially the Phoenix Suns’ easy parade of baskets.

“You sit and watch Cliff Robinson and Jason Kidd and the rest of those guys for 48 minutes run through you, it gets kind of tiresome watching,” Fox said.

“I think it comes to a point where you have to do something about it. If they’re just going to score as easy as they’d been scoring all day . . . let them feel it a little bit.”

Fox played only 44 minutes combined in the first four games of this series and said he hoped to instill a little fire in his team during such a sluggish performance.

“Here we were, 3-0 in the series, and it didn’t seem like we came to play really,” Fox said. “And I’ve seen this before with us, and it’s not anything we should be proud of, you know?

“It’s fight. How much fight do you have in you? How much fire do you have it in you to actually do whatever it takes to win. . . .

“Wanting to be out there was definitely something on my mind. And once I got out there, I wanted it to be more than just being out there and running up and down the court for the last three minutes.”

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There was less Laker surprise about Shaquille O’Neal’s second-place finish in the defensive-player-of-the-year voting (21 votes, behind Alonzo Mourning’s 62) than the four votes received by Kobe Bryant, which tied him with former winner Gary Payton.

“That surprised me a little bit,” Coach Phil Jackson said of the Bryant vote. “But he’s a very active player whose disruptive ability is quite noticeable on the floor and his attention has grown so much this year.”