Steve Francis — ‘The Chain Is In Our Possession’

EXCLUSIVE

Steve Francis is tenacious that his gold string is NOT missing in action — with his rep telling TMZ Sports, “It’s in our possession in Houston.”

We broke the report … some thief tried to rip the string off the NBA star’s neck during a rap show in Houston this past weekend.  

Now, Steve’s publicist Dre Johnson tells us … “The situation is being resolved as we speak and we will provide corporal verification that we have the string in our possession upon our restore to Houston later this week.”

Johnson says Francis and his business team have been traveling ever since the incident — “We had to glide to Boston yesterday to do a deal with Reebok to re-release the classic Steve Francis shoes.”

Johnson says the string-jacker clearly didn’t know who he was messin’ with — “When you touch a bigwig you don’t know who you touching. You got to be more careful out here. These young guys don’t reckon, they answer and then apologize and backtrack quickly.”

As for the fate of the person who yanked the string, Johnson says Steve will appear on “TMZ Hollywood Sports” in the next few days to clarify everything. 

Stay tuned …