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“He’s Mr. Villanova to all of us. You kind of have a feeling, but I was shocked. Everyone who saw that story texted me about it,” says Randy Foye, who was Wright’s first NBA player from the Villanova program and who still keeps in close contact with his former coach. “What I see him doing is going somewhere in a team president role where he could do both, build a team and be the coach. He could run a Fortune 500 company if he wanted to.”
Nets Daily: "I want to be there for the good part," said @Randy Foye two years when playing for Nets. Now he’s doing @LongIslandNets games for YES. He said back then he’d be open to returning as a coach or front-office executive.
Sirius XM NBA: "I wanted (@klow7) to go to Philly, I've told him to go back home." -@Randy Foye on what he's told his former @NovaMBB teammate
For so long he clung to the hope that his mother would still be alive but also dreaded if that were true -- where had she been and why did she leave? But this is far from a sad day for Foye. He has his mother again. This will be his best Mother's Day yet. "This is definitely a happy ending," Foye says in an emotional interview with ESPN. "Yeah, you didn't get the Disney and the 'I just won a Super Bowl' ending. But all that time of just debating and questioning yourself and questioning your mom's morals, thinking that she left and didn't come back ... now you know that she was there all along but she ran into a little problem that cost her her life.
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"He couldn't go into details," Foye said. "[But it was an] overdose. She was found in an apartment building where they pick up and buy drugs. It was known for distribution of drugs. January of 1990." Regina Foye's body had been buried in Kings County in Brooklyn. For the first time in Foye's life, things began to make sense. His mother didn't abandon him and his brother for another family. She died and was resting in the same borough where Foye was now playing for his seventh NBA team.
Foye is 33, and the Nets are his seventh NBA team. When his phone rang from a government number in September, he assumed it was bad news about his recent physical exam in advance of the new season, his 11th in the NBA. "The guy who did my stress test said, 'If you get a call from someone from New York state, it means you failed your stress test,’’ says Foye. "So I thought that was what happened.’’ The voice in his phone was asking him: "Are you sitting down?’’ He had been preparing his entire life for this conversation, and still he was taken by surprise. It came out of the blue, this call from Brooklyn. The authorities believed they had located Regina Foye. They had found his mother.
"I think it’s my upbringing,’’ Foye says. "Not having my mom and my dad, It seemed like it was always pressure for my grandmoms, or my aunt who I was staying with, to put food on the table. And in those moments I was always calm. I just always used to say, 'We have it tonight, we are good.’ Or, 'Don’t stretch yourself, I’ll eat in school.’ Or something like that. 'Don’t worry.’’’
His life story is well known. His father died in a motorcycle accident when Randy was 2. Three years later, his mother was gone. A community of family and friends in Newark came together to raise Randy. Along the way the mystery of his mother’s disappearance was relayed to him slowly, cautiously, as he was able to absorb it. "I didn’t know what was going on until I was 9 or 10,’’ says Foye. He remembers being told, in the beginning, that she was on vacation. Later, when he was of the age of his eldest daughter now, he learned that his mother had been seen climbing into a van in Newark and that was the last anyone had seen of her. "She wouldn’t just leave and disappear like that – it had to be foul play,’’ he says of those conversations he used to have. "That’s what I got from my grandmother, that they couldn’t find her and it wasn’t like her. So they was just like, 'Somebody kidnapped her.’’’
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His first thought in September, when the caller told him that his mother had been found, was that she must be alive. The image of this miracle after three decades overwhelmed him before he could think it through. "I would have been upset,’’ he says. Because if she was alive, he found himself asking, then why would she not have come home to him? Why had she not been in his life? "That was the scary part at first,’’ he says. But then, just as quickly, he dismissed it. He knew that it was never her choice to stay away. "The type of person that she was,’’ Foye says, "I couldn’t believe she would be alive that whole time and not come back for her son or to see her son. But she wasn’t.’’
She was not alive. His mother had died in January 1990, he was told. She had been buried in Brooklyn as a Jane Doe. "It was an overdose,’’ Foye says. It settled upon him that the drugs had taken her away. "She was deceased,’’ he says. "And then my emotions were, wow. My mom is here.’’ A DNA test confirmed the identity of Regina Foye. There was a small ceremony of family and friends, 15 or so people gathered in a room with her ashes, and Foye stood up to attest to his mother. But the words were buried too deeply. He could not find them.
Throughout the season, Foye averaged 5.9 points on 35.1% shooting and 30% for three in what was a down year for the former seventh overall pick. This season he’s in search of a bounce back season, even though his role isn’t entirely clear yet. “I can’t really elaborate on exactly what it’s going to be because you never know,” Foye said matter of factly. “You’ve just got to work as hard as you can every single day, and it’s not about me, it’s about we, it’s about the Nets. No matter what other people say, we know this team can win.”
Foye’s future was in his hands this summer. He was in talks with other teams during free agency, but chose to come to Brooklyn, with familiarity playing a big role. “Brooklyn made the most sense,” Foye said. “I could have gone to other places, but talking to Sean and talking to Kenny and talking to Chris [Fleming] – who coached me – talking to Sebastian [Poirier], talking to all of these different people, it made sense. You go somewhere else, you don’t know anybody, but if you go here you know three or four people. It just made more sense.”
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