http://www.startribune.com/511/story/997479.html Timberwolves guard Randy Foye already had one good reason -- the possibility of a fluke injury -- not to get in between two friends who were fighting early Monday outside a south Minneapolis gas station. Now, after dealing with the law enforcement and media by-products of what Foye described as a minor scuffle -- on what was supposed to be a day off from Wolves duties -- the rookie from Villanova has two. The celebrity of a pro athlete cuts both ways. "It troubles me a lot [to be involved in this]," Foye told Twin Cities reporters in a conference call Monday afternoon. The telephone interview was arranged so Foye could offer details and explain his role in the incident near 25th St. W. and Hennepin Avenue. The Wolves player said that he and three "family members" -- "younger cousins and, like, people who I grew up with for 15-plus years" -- pulled his SUV into the parking lot after two in their party began arguing. Officers responded at about 2:40 a.m., interviewed the four men and issued Foye, 23, and two others misdemeanor citations for disorderly conduct. A fourth, Pierre D. Mitchell, 22, was booked into Hennepin County jail for obstructing the legal process after he kicked at officers while refusing to be seated in a squad car. Foye made it sound like a lesson learned. "I will never put myself in a situation like that where you have family members around you and they're arguing," he said. "You have to have people around you who understand the situation that you're in. My family, they didn't mean to do it. It's like anybody, your family gets into it and you try to be the peacekeeper and, at the end, everybody comes down on me because I'm the one with the name here." Several hours earlier, Foye had made his first start at point guard for the Wolves in a 109-107 victory over Boston at Target Center. The seventh pick overall in the NBA draft last June, Foye has averaged 9.0 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 21 minutes, and was selected to play in the Rookie Challenge game Friday at NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas. One of the men in Foye's group wound up with a bloody nose, something that wasn't lost on the 6-4 guard. "I knew what I do for my profession, I can't try to break up anything," he said. "Even if you're trying to break up a little tussle, you get your hand in there and someone makes a mistake even if they don't mean it and grabs or gets ahold of your finger or wrist, you get it broken or messed up. So my whole thing was, whatever they were going to do, let them do it. Then once they solved it, get back into the car and then you drive back home." Asked if the police treated him unfairly, Foye said: "No. I think they did a good job how they handled the situation. They did everything in their power not to make it seem [more than] it was. But you know, I've got a recognizable name and once people got hold of it . . . " Foye's reputation coming out of Villanova was that of a fellow who overcame a rough background growing up in Newark, N.J. He was raised by his grandmothers, and avoided the sort of gang trouble that caught his younger brother Christopher in September 2004 when, mistakenly or otherwise, he was shot 11 times (Christopher survived). Foye graduated from Villanova last May with a geography degree. So winding up on the police blotter now, his NBA ambitions underway, accounted for what sounded like contrition in Foye's voice. "I just want to apologize to the fans and the organization, the Timberwolves, because this totally is not me," he said. "If you read certain things that make it out that I was involved, I was not involved at all. I just want to make that clear, apologize to my fans out there that that's not me and it won't be me in the future because I'm much smarter than that." Staff writer Jim Adams and the Associated Press contributed to this report. --

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