Do you remember the moment you chose your team? What came over you that compelled you to ride with them for good?
For some, it is not a choice. It’s a precedent bestowed upon you from day one.
That’s the way it goes in Lakers households...
That’s the way it goes in Celtics households, too...
You don’t get to decide, you are told who your team is. And then you learn the intricacies of loyalty—unshakeable loyalty.
Loyalty is the heartbeat of rivalry. You take your side, they take theirs, and you both stay there through the good, the bad, and otherwise.
What has the power to break that kind of loyalty?
“It’s easy to shift your allegiance when you’re pissed off,” former Celtics and Lakers player Rick Fox answered.
Fox was selected by the Celtics in the 1991 Draft. He played in Boston for six seasons. “Red Auerbach drafted me and then Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish raised me,” he said.
He joined the C’s after leaving the North Carolina Tar Heels as the basketball team’s all-time steals leader and games-played leader. He was the first rookie to start on opening night in Boston since Bird in 1979. He averaged 10.7 points and 1.2 steals in a primarily sixth-man role throughout his time on the East Coast team.
In Fox’s sixth season, Rick Pitino joined the organization as President and Coach of the Celtics. At that point, as a captain, Fox had opted out of his contract because he believed that he was far more valued than what he was being paid.
“Rightfully so he should’ve fired everybody, we only won fifteen games that year,” Fox explained about the steps Pitino was taking upon joining the organization. But Pitino told Fox he wanted to build the team around him. He told him how he was the one player he wanted to keep. “I bought into that vision,” Fox said.
They negotiated a contract on a Friday and then Pitino flew to LA that night where he negotiated a contract with seven-footer Travis Knight, who was a Laker at that time. “Travis Knight ended up signing a seven-year, 20-million dollar deal that weekend,” Fox explained. “I had agreed to a seven-year, 33-million-dollar deal."
“I thought on Monday I was going to get a contract. I went to get a haircut at the barbershop. I was in my car waiting for the barbershop to open up, and my agent called me and said that I had been renounced.”
Rick was shocked because 72 hours earlier he and the Celtics had arrived at a verbal agreement pertaining to the details of his contract, a contract he would never receive. That following Monday, he had lost his Bird Rights—the league created a Larry Bird Right exemption where if you had been with the team for a certain period of time you could sign over the cap. “But they renounced me, and I lost those rights,” he explained. His only option was to sign with another team, everyone was over the cap, and they only had million-dollar exemptions.
Red Auerbach called Fox to apologize. The Celtics asked him to wait 90 days until they could sign him again in the middle of the season, but he wasn’t going to do that. He called the departure from Boston an “unceremonious exit.”
“I was the hottest free agent on the market because I was a guy worth 33-40 million dollars that could only sign for a million dollars,” Fox explained. He spoke with New York, he spoke with Atlanta, and then he went out to Los Angeles.
“The beauty of LA was they had Jerry West, they had Mitch Kupchak, they had Dr. Buss, and then they had my buddy Shaquille O’Neal,” he said. When he got into town for a meeting, Jerry West took Fox around, they ate at Dan Tana’s Italian Restaurant in West Hollywood. He met Dr. Buss at his house, the Pickfair mansion. Shaq picked him up and showed him around the city. And even his former college coach, Dean Smith, called him to recommend that he sign with Los Angeles.
Fox declared, “I was looking at the whole landscape: We’ve got Shaq, an owner that’s always taken care of his players, an organization that wins, Jerry West is the logo, he’s pretty darn smart if he’s calling me and telling me I’m the glue to the team. Then you’ve got Mitch Kupchak, my Carolina brother, this is where I want to be. And for me, it was the opposite of the Celtics, their arch enemy.”
The decision was made.
“I was pissed,” he said of his dismissal from Boston. “I was thinking I was going to win a championship; they were chasing No. 17. And so that was the goal when I was there for six years, to get a seventeenth banner.”
After the meeting with the Lakers organization, Fox flew back to Boston and his agent called to let him know that the Cleveland Cavaliers expressed interest. GM Wayne Embry and Head Coach, Mike Fratello, flew out to Boston to meet with Fox. They offered him 20 million dollars.
Rick told his agent, “No thank you, I’m going to LA.” His agent was stunned that Fox would be willing to leave 20 million dollars on the table.
But it wasn’t about the money anymore. “I know what it’s like to think I had 33 million dollars and be secure for the rest of my life and then have it gone. And so, I’m never playing for money again,” Fox said.
He flew back to LA a few days later where he had his first press conference with the Lakers. It was there he was asked what jersey number he was going to wear.
“I want number 17,” he said.
He said how he found solace in the thought that “I’m going to win my first championship with the Lakers before they win their seventeenth. And then we won three of them.”
The first two years of Fox’s career in the purple and gold they didn’t take the title. They were good though. In his first season, they won 62 games but were swept by the Utah Jazz in the 1998 Western Conference Finals. The following year Fox signed for another 1-million-dollar contract; it was a lockout season. And then the Lakers were swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Semifinals.
Fox explained how, “Every year we lost and I didn’t win a championship, it was heartbreaking. Because it wasn’t about money it was about getting that championship before them. It was personal at that point. Basketball was about how you rejected me, kicked me out, and threw me away after I committed what I thought was an act of loyalty. And now I have to prove that you made a mistake.”
But then the next season, Phil Jackson came in.
Phil and Rick had a couple of encounters before they were on the same team in Los Angeles. While Phil was head coach of the Bulls, and after a game they had played the Celtics, Rick approached him and told Phil, “I want to play for you someday.”
Then in 1996, in the series when the 72-win Bulls defeated the Seattle SuperSonics to grab their fourth title, Rick had gone to watch a game. It was the first time he’d ever been to a Finals matchup and something changed in him after that experience, he had a deep revelation:
“If you’re a player and you’ve never been to a Finals game and you want to win a championship, you have to go to a Finals game and experience it. When you sit in the stands, and you watch a Finals game, you realize you’re not doing anywhere near what is needed to play at that level.”
Four years later he wasn’t in the seat anymore, he was on the floor. Led by Shaq and Kobe Bryant, the Lakers won their first championship since the Showtime era in 2000 after overpowering the Pacers four games to two. Then in 2001, they took down the Philadelphia 76ers in five games. And to secure the Three-Peat, the Lakers swept the Brooklyn Nets in 2002.
Fox had three championships under his belt. And the Celtics still hadn’t reached their seventeenth.
“My time here was a run of excellence,” Fox explained, “Because the franchise was run with that one goal in mind every year, and the commitment to it is paramount. The best players always seem to be here, some way, somehow. I think they gravitate to this and so the culture is rich with excellence, and I happened to be a part of it with a lot of great players.”
Rick explained how both Boston and Los Angeles are basketball cities. The sport is a staple in people’s lives, he explained how you can feel it when you’re in either city. And that when you win in both cities, you are celebrated like no other place. “Boston is a blue-collar celebration. LA is a glamorous celebration,” he said.
Rick pointed out that he’s unfamiliar with personally winning in Boston, he only experienced that in LA. But he’s examined losing in both places, “You lose in LA; you fade to the background. You’re gone pretty quickly. You don’t get to stick around.” And when it comes to Boston he said, “I wouldn’t go into an Irish bar looking for your brother when your team’s 15-62 on St. Patrick’s Day.”
Either way, in both places he concluded, “The tolerance for mediocrity…there’s equal disdain.”
The style of basketball differed though.
“East Coast is always a very physical, grind-it-out experience night in and night out. I had to learn how to be physical in order to survive in the Eastern Conference. I remember coming to the Western Conference and being shocked at how soft it was,” he said.
Fox mentioned how he started beating everyone up in the Western Conference because you could get away with it. And that his physicality inspired more East-Coast toughness on the Lakers who were a team that was young and more focused on finesse. That soon changed entirely, the Lakers had Shaq who was brutal under the hoop. And after Fox, they also acquired East-Coast intimidation in Ron Harper and John Salley. The team became nothing short of tenacious, especially in their pursuit of the Three-Peat.
Also key to their success, they ran the triangle offense, a style of play that incorporated everyone’s skills into the game. “It was a style of play that gave us the ability to trust,” Rick said. “It was euphoric at times when we got it right, and there’s no purer experience in basketball than when you’re running the triangle offense at its best. It’s spiritual.”
“Five years under Phil and the triangle offense in LA, it was like a doctorate in basketball.”
But before his doctorate in basketball, Rick received a PhD in efficiency.
For Fox’s rookie season, he played with Larry Bird in his final season. On the first day of practice in training camp, Bird challenged him to a game of one-on-one—with zero dribbles.
“I had never done that; I didn’t know it was possible. And he proceeded to beat me with zero dribbles. And that’s from the top of the key. I was like ‘How the hell did I let that happen,’” Fox said.
“That was my first snapshot into how great he was. He had complete control of every aspect of his game—but also of your game. He knew exactly how to take advantage of his opponent. And then he also was just super, super all in. He was all in at all times around the game. Even with his injuries, it didn’t matter, he still earned every dollar. He had a workmen’s-like approach to his game where he respected the game, he respected his job, he respected his teammates. He conducted himself as if he owed the game his life.”
“The people in both organizations,” Rick said, “I will tell you, have always been amazing.” He doesn’t consider his exit as a “stain on the Celtics.”
“Boston had its scars for me, but it toughened me; it made me the player I needed to be when I got here.”
Maybe loyalty is the heartbeat of rivalry, and revenge is the air it breathes. But no matter what side you started on; you'll find peace with all of it. Because you’ll always end up where you were meant to.
“I regard myself as a Laker and that’s not out of disrespect towards the Celtics. This is my home.”