Fox Hunter

There was the moment Rick Fox knew he’d been had, used by Doug Christie in the early minutes of that October exhibition game.

Tucked between the short jab that hit his chin and the sneak attack that would cost him more than a quarter-million dollars, six basketball games and a measure of his reputation, it came to him, when he turned and saw Christie ... pleased.

He is sure of it two months later, maybe more now than he was then, having had time for the doubt to roll in and out of his head, unwilling to believe that Christie might be so calculating, before seeing it again, clearer than before.

Fox, days from standing on the same floor as Christie and his Sacramento King teammates for the first time since, grits his perfect white teeth and recalls, “Tick ... tick ... tick ... snap!”

Then Fox left the floor, bound for he knew not what, something like revenge for the punch, something like honor for the organization -- it was all twisted together -- driven by what he estimated as four minutes of rage.

*

Fox would not let up on the Kings last spring, through the seven-game Western Conference finals, among the most gripping series the Lakers have ever played.

He reminded them often of their failures against the Lakers, including the sweep the season before, of the banners that hung in Los Angeles and not in their arena, of how the Lakers knew how to win.

So it was Fox, perceived as being along for Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s ride, who became despised, particularly after the Lakers went to Sacramento and won Game 7 in overtime.

Months later, Christie admitted the pressure of the series was more than he could bear, telling the Sacramento Bee that he was “scared to death” in the waning minutes of the final game.

The Lakers were amazed at Christie’s confession. O’Neal, who already had called the Kings “Queens,” ridiculed him. Many wondered if Christie, the rangy guard who’d often been assigned to defend Bryant and had become conspicuous by obediently waving to his wife in the stands, hadn’t lost his teammates for good.

On Oct. 25 at Staples Center, the Lakers played the Kings in their final exhibition game. They were without O’Neal, who’d had surgery six weeks before, but they’d played without him before and generally won as often as not.

Two minutes and 7 seconds into the game, Christie moved in on Fox, who swung the basketball over his head, knocking Christie to the floor with his elbow. As Christie sat, Fox allowed the ball to roll from his hands, at Christie, who smacked it back at Fox.

As the crowd stirred and players and referees arrived at a situation escalating, Fox shoved Christie away, in the face. Christie countered with the short left punch that struck Fox squarely on the point of his jaw, and then they were separated.

“I don’t know Doug Christie,” Fox said. “So it’d be hard to say I have a dislike for him. I have a problem with somebody punching me in the jaw. I dislike that part. But I don’t really know him. He’s a Sacramento King. And, obviously, the Sacramento Kings have been pretty good to us the last few years. So it’d be hard for me to hate him.”

See, they can’t help themselves.

*

A few dozen people milled around on the floor in the moments after the incident, the Kings near their bench and the Lakers near theirs, three officials huddled in the middle, sorting through the drama.

Fox, who was standing near Phil Jackson at the time, recalls thinking, “He’s getting kicked out. I’m staying in the game. He punched me. I’m not going to run around, look like a fool trying to chase him down. I’m never going to get there anyway. There must be 10 people between him and me. I’ll see him again.”

Finally, referee Bill Spooner approached Fox and Phil Jackson.

“Rick,” he said, “you’re going to be gone. So is Christie.”

Fox was stunned.

“The guy threw the ball at me. Charged me. I push him away and he throws a punch that hits me in the jaw. And now you’re kicking me out of the game?”

Out of curiosity, Fox, having for the moment forgotten his role in this spat, looked over Spooner’s shoulder and found Christie.

*

In 11-plus NBA seasons, Rick Fox at times has been a scorer, but was most useful as a system guy -- eager to play defense and toil within the offense if it meant victories. With the Lakers, it meant more than that. It meant championships, so he threw himself into the role, often becoming an accomplished irritant.

He came to expect retaliation. He played to annoy other players, to push them into an edgy pace. The elbow to the neck was a compliment, then. The shove in the back was exactly what he had hoped for.

“I knew I kind of deserved it,” he said.

It came as a shock, then, when it was he who had been played. Not exactly as he’d done, but close. Maybe Christie hadn’t taken the floor intending to rescue his reputation and take Fox with him, but he wouldn’t pass on the opportunity, either, Fox said.

So, when he saw Christie standing at the other end of the floor, not 80 feet away, dribbling the basketball between his legs, flipping it at the rim, the moment had arrived.

“It was almost like he was this little proud Cheshire cat, that he’d gotten away with something,” Fox said. “I was composed up until the time I turned around. If he had been standing there, concerned too, then I probably would have been OK. The fact that he was so proud of himself, you could just see it was, like, ‘Finally, maybe my teammates will respect me now.’

“When you add up all of it, he came in there and felt like, in the eyes of his teammates, they’d respect him. And I could see it in his face. I literally turned, I didn’t even wait for them to say, ‘You gotta go.’ I just turned. My first thought was, ‘He’s got to come down that tunnel. I know it. They’re going to go tell him and I’m going to be there to talk to him.’ ”

*

He arrived in time, of course, racing through the tunnel, down a hallway and emerging on the other side, in plenty of time to ambush the departing Christie. The Kings’ bench flooded into the tunnel to defend Christie, and O’Neal, in street clothes, arrived a few moments later.

No one was hurt. Christie was suspended for two games, Fox for six. The season started, the Kings playing much closer to their potential than the Lakers to theirs. The final conversations that night were of the Christmas Day game, the next time the Lakers and Kings would share a floor, and now it is nearly upon them.

Fox sat Sunday on a metal chair he unfolded in Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, in a gray hallway not unlike the one at Staples Center. He said he wished he had left it on the floor.

“I think it’s good there was two months between it,” he said. “I’ll tell you, I think it’ll always be an issue. I can’t speak for him. But I think it will always be an issue because of what I found out about myself. So, there’s a side of me that’s not comfortable with that. I’m a control freak, big time. I need to be under control. I like to control my surroundings. Obviously, being punched, I don’t do well.

“Nothing’s premeditated. I won’t enter that game with the thought, ‘I’ve got to get him back.’ To me, when we step on the floor on Christmas Day, it’s about basketball. If he and I bump into each other, I’m not going to swing at him. And I don’t expect him to swing at me.”

Before the game, he could, of course, reach out to shake Christie’s hand. Christie might refuse.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Fox said. “I don’t. Just talking about it right now, I can feel it.... It only takes one thing. I don’t in any way want that incident to reoccur. Or, in any way, for it to be more than basketball. I’ve had people, over the last two months, tell me, ‘Way to get him. You kicked his [butt].’ And others tell me, ‘You got your [butt] kicked.’ Everyone has an opinion, but no one talks about the fact it was terrible for basketball, for both of us. So, all that stuff I’ve heard for two months, I’m always thinking, ‘That’s not what this should be about here.’

“Two months has been great. I’ve been able to let it die down. Now, if I can’t sleep Christmas Eve, if I go home and I’m nasty to the wife and kids, obviously there’s something still underneath there. But, I’d like to be the bigger person and be able to let it go and be a basketball player.”