There were several reasons why the mood at the New Jersey Nets’ annual post-Christmas party was unabashedly celebratory. After all, weren’t the Nets riding high with a record of 23-14? Wasn’t their roster loaded with such potent young talent as Mike Gminski, Buck Williams, Darryl Dawkins, Albert King, and especially the dazzling Micheal Ray Richardson? And hadn’t they demonstrated their kinetic potential just eighteen months ago when they had upset the defending champion Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs? No wonder the owner of the team, Joe Taub, was brimming with optimism.
“Jersey Joe” was born in Paterson, where his father, an immigrant from Poland, eked out enough money to support the family by driving a horse-drawn cart though the streets of the city buying and selling junk.
Taub played basketball at Eastside High School and became a devotee of the sport. He developed another lifelong passion while a student at Temple University—an interest in entrepreneurial promotions. That’s where he and a fellow classmate, Bill Cosby, booked acts for a school show titled The Hour of Pleasure. One act booked for $50.00 by Taub and Cosby was a virtually unknown folk-rock group called the Mamas and the Papas. The band was paid $35.00 and Taub and Cosby each earned $7.50. Numbers meant money, so after graduating from Temple, Taub found employment as an accountant.
At age twenty-one, Joe and his older brother Henry founded a business that soon became Automatic Data Processing, a firm that printed checks for large industries. By 1985 Taub’s company employed a work force of thirty thousand and grossed $3.5 billion annually. In addition to his many local philanthropic avocations, Taub had headed a syndicate that purchased the Long Island–based Nets in 1978 and moved them to Piscataway, New Jersey.
He was a short, trim septuagenarian who, in his tailored pin-striped, double-breasted suits, with his sharp grey eyes, and his heart-shaped head topped by a coiffed helmet of thick gray hair, could easily pass for a fifty-year-old still lingering in the prime of life.
And if Taub saw himself as father figure and patron to all of his players, he had a special fondness for Richardson. That’s because, since Richardson had already failed two official drug tests, the exuberantly immature Richardson needed more supportive attention than the rest. And Taub wholeheartedly believed his best player’s vows that he had quit drugs and would stay clean forever more. After all, who was two-faced enough to lie to Jersey Joe?
And, hey, ’twas the season to be jolly.
So Taub had gone to considerable expense to make sure that all of the Nets employees would have a bang-up time in a private, windowless, mirror-walled room in George’s Restaurant in Moonachie, New Jersey, just a short drive from the Nets’ practice court. Indeed, he’d sprung for $7,000 for the top-of-the-line “Grand Buffet”—featuring everything from filet mignon to seafood paella, from chicken piccata to baked Virginia ham. All available at carving stations or served from real silver chafing dishes. There was also an open bar and waiters in tuxedos circulating through the one hundred or so guests bearing trays of bite-sized shrimp and chicken goodies. A “hip” DJ cost Taub another $250.
Dozens of tables were arranged around the fringes of the dance floor, each table covered with a white linen tablecloth that matched the napkins, also with fancy translucent china, crystal glassware, gleaming utensils, flowers, candles, the works. However, very few of those on hand bothered to sit at the tables, preferring instead to dance on the brown-and-tan marbleized floor as the DJ played the hits of the day: Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, and even the Talking Heads. As a concession to “the brothers,” the room also rocked with disco tunes, and Kool & the Gang was still cool enough.
By far the happiest of the Nets players was Micheal “Sugar” Ray Richardson, and his joy was understandable: At age thirty, he was in the second season of a four-year $3 million contract. His wife had just given birth to a baby boy, and Richardson had rewarded her with a brand-new, silver-hued Mercedes-Benz convertible. (His was gold colored.) Even better he was already a four-time All-Star and was playing like a guaranteed future Hall of Famer. Only a few weeks ago, Larry Bird had said this about Sugar Ray: “He’s the best basketball player on the planet.”
For sure, Micheal’s not-so-distant past was a haze of habitual drug and alcohol abuse. He had previously tested positive twice for cocaine and on several occasions had been forced to spend time in rehab centers. But he was convinced that he had learned his lesson, that he was “cured.” And hadn’t he been certified clean for just over two years? The NBA had even recruited Richardson to appear in Cocaine Drain, a widely disseminated antidrug video. “Cleaner than Mister Clean,” he says of that time. “And playing the best basketball of my career.”
Besides, at the behest of Taub, Richardson’s best buddy and teammate was on hand to look out for him. That would be Darryl Dawkins, aka Chocolate Thunder, all six feet eleven, 270 pounds of him—famous for tearing down rims and joyfully claiming he was from the planet Lovetron. However, even though he’d been in the NBA for eight years, Dawkins remained a man-child and underachieving player. Off the court, Dawkins was the team jester and party-time ring leader. Always ready for a good time, he devoured the bountiful feast of his life with two hungry hands. Most importantly, Big Double-D was no stranger to illicit drug use; had seen, heard, and used everything; and always knew what was what.
So there was Sugar Ray, his round face split with a wide, sparkling smile that bent his thin moustache into a shallow U-shape, while his high cheekbones and thick black brows squeezed his flashing brown eyes. Festive in his fashionable light-blue casual suit, Richardson was dancing with this guy’s secretary, that guy’s assistant, the other guy’s bookkeeper.
C’mon, ladies. Spin the light fantastic with the Sugar Man. He’ll make you feel happy, important, beautiful.
When the DJ took a short break, Richardson wandered over to the bar where Dawkins was inhaling a bottle of beer. The two pals were quickly joined by Bobby Cattage, a big-chested six-foot-seven rookie from a small town in Louisiana, a stranger in paradise who yearned to be as “with it” as Dawkins and Richardson.
Dawkins took to informing the rook about what a jerk Isiah Thomas was: “If you’re driving down the lane and he’s right there? The little shit’ll step on your plant foot, something the three blind mice never see, something that can fuck up your knee and end your career in a hurry. So when you get a chance to foul the fucker, lay the wood to him. No matter how hard you hit him they can only give you one foul.”
“Y-y-y-yeah,” said Richardson. “M-m-make him p-pick his b-b-black ass off the f-floor and hit two f-f-free throws.”
The rookie nodded in eager agreement. He couldn’t wait to earn his bona fides and fuck up Thomas.
Their small conference was interrupted when a young woman rushed past them, a newly hired secretary to one of Taub’s legion of lawyers. She was a somewhat thin redhead, overdressed in a blue chiffon cocktail dress. Dawkins took a quick look and pronounced her to be “unfuckable.”
The players watched as she approached her boss, a gray-haired man stuffed into a fat brown suit. They were both a little tipsy and spoke loud enough for the three players to overhear.
It seems she was unfamiliar with exactly where she was and worried about the heavy snow that had begun to fall. She needed directions to her apartment in Irvington and was offered two choices. A circuitous journey via various parkways and highways, or a short-cut through East Orange that would save fifteen minutes.
She opted for the latter route, “before the snow gets really bad.”
The lawyer said to take a right here, a left there, veer this way around the park, and so on. But he warned her that East Orange was a dangerous neighborhood. “Make sure to lock your car door,” he said. “And if you’re stopped at a red light and somebody approaches you, then just go through the light. . . . The night belongs to them.”
Dawkins snorted and said to his teammates, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The rookie was quick to second the motion. “Where to?” he asked.
“The Sports Bar at the Sheraton,” Dawkins said. Then he turned to face Richardson. “You coming, Sugar?”
“N-n-nah. I’m g-going straight home.” His wife, the baby. Besides, his sister had just flown in from Denver to spend the rest of the holiday with them.
Micheal can never forget what happened next: “It was snowing like we were at the North Pole, so I was in kind of a hurry to get home. But, on the way there, I had to pass the hotel anyway, so I thought, what the hell, I’d just stop by for a few minutes. It was one of the worst decisions I ever made.”
The Sports Bar in nearby Aspen Heights had the obligatory mirror-backed bar, several wall- and pillar-mounted TV sets tuned to various sporting events: games of soccer, basketball, tennis, and hockey. A space large enough for dancing separated the bar from a small dining room. Above all, the Sports Bar was always swarming with friendly young women.
“It was a real hot spot,” says Micheal. “A lot of the guys would go there after games, and it was also a favorite after-practice destination for the New York Giants. So the single, on-the-make women knew where the rich athletes would be. Normally, though, I stayed away from there.”
Once he entered the Sports Bar that fateful evening, however, Micheal lingered to dance, sign some autographs, and slug down several generous shots of bourbon. “That was the start of it all,” he says. “I was feeling good. Real good.”
Meanwhile, Dawkins had other plans. He had a date with a beautiful light-skinned girl to do some hot-and-heavy mattress bouncing over at his house. Besides, Sugar was drinking and laughing and having fun. Dawkins knew that Richardson wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but he seemed to be totally under control. So Dawkins went over to Cattage, told the rook that he had to go, and asked if he could keep tabs on Sugar. And Cattage said, “No problem.”
After a few more drinks, a good-looking blonde approached Richardson. He’d seen her there once or twice, but they’d never spoken to each other, not even to say hello. Anyway, she was coming on to him now real strong. Dispensing with the preliminaries, she said she’d fuck him like he’d never been fucked before.
White chicks, black chicks, yellow chicks, even a red one once in Houston, he’d had them all. As far as Sugar was concerned a pussy was a pussy. Still, he was haunted by the memory of his childhood in Lubbock, a dusty, nowhere shit hole in the Texas Panhandle. Where the crackers mercilessly made fun of his stuttering. They laughed whenever he dared to speak in school—not that the teachers ever called on him. And the white bitches were even more abusive than the guys, calling him “M-m-mu-mumbles.” It wasn’t so bad when his mom moved the family to Denver, but only when he became the star of the high-school team in his senior year.
Yeah, so he took a certain relish in fucking white chicks. Besides, unlike many of the greedy hellcat sisters he’d been with, no white chick ever called him “nigger.”
Richardson was also well aware that his postpartum wife was in a special state, super-sensitive, not wanting to make love or even to be touched. Monogamy was not his thing anyway, and he was more than a little horny. Besides, the blonde was eminently fuckable. “Okay, let’s g-go d-d-do it.”
And Bobby Cattage?
“I turned away from Sugar for about a minute, right? And when I turned back around, he was gone. I ran outside just in time to see him drive off with some white girl in a gold-colored Mercedes. It was snowing like crazy, but he had the top down. And nobody saw him for another three or four days.”
“She was a businesswoman,” says Richardson. “She was attracted to me and was just out for a good time. I never did find out what her name was, and I can’t even remember exactly what she looked like.”
They drove to her apartment—“a nice, classy place.” Then she pulled a bag of goodies out of a drawer in the bedroom. Coke to snort. Coke to smoke. Richardson figured he could handle one dose. “But I was wrong.”
The first round landed Richardson in sex heaven. “We were banging away and howling with pleasure. But the second dose wasn’t as good as the first, and every hit from then on had less and less effect. Still, a druggie winds up chasing a ghost. Doing it just to do it. And we were still heavy into our fuckathon.”
If the coke made Richardson more alert to the moment, it also obliterated his overall sense of time’s passing. “The only things that mattered were the drugs, the sex, and the paranoia. The fucking paranoia got worse and worse, because I knew I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing. But, man, I was so motherfucking high, so wrapped up in the drugs.”
Meanwhile, the TV was always on, never off. “But it was just background stuff that we didn’t pay attention to. Looking without seeing, hearing without listening. But then, on the third day, I couldn’t help noticing my own picture on the screen and a voiceover saying that Micheal Ray Richardson was missing. They said it was feared that I’d been kidnapped and might even be dead. “So I shouted at the TV, ‘Hey, motherfucker, I ain’t missing. I’m right here!’”
Oh, shit. That’s when Richardson came back into real time. He had missed two practice sessions and one ball game. Desperate to cover himself, he called the Nets and said he’d just escaped from kidnappers. Then he went home.
If Richardson suddenly realized where he was and where he was supposed to be, for several years David Stern had a similar awareness regarding the state of the NBA. The league was currently in trouble on many levels, and despite featuring razzle-dazzle action and the world’s greatest athletes, the popular appeal of NBA action was noticeably diminishing.
If game attendance for the current regular season was actually up a tick from the 1984–85 campaign (to an average of 11,893), the slight increase (257 fans per game) was primarily due to the presence of three heralded rookies—Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and Michael Jordan. Even so, only the account ledgers of New York, Chicago, and the Los Angeles Lakers were recorded in black ink.
More ominous was the decrease in the previous season’s playoff attendance—14,391, down from a peak of 17,048 in 1979. This particular situation verged on catastrophe since NBA teams looked to these “extra” games as providing a huge income bonanza.
And what would happen when the deeds of Olajuwon, Barkley, and Jordan became routine? Who was foolish enough to believe that any or all of these young black players would have sufficient charisma to overcome the institutional racism that plagued virtually every facet of American culture?
Just ten short years before in the 1974–75 season, black players composed only 71 percent of those NBA players who had logged one thousand or more total minutes. In 1985 that total was up to 81 percent. However, because the city of Boston had a long tradition of antiblack fervor—more than once, Bill Russell’s house there was broken into and the intruders defecated on his bed—the Celtics roster featured six white players: Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Bill Walton, and Jerry Sichting. Discounting the Celtics, then, the presence of minute-intensive blacks in the NBA rose to 83.2 percent.
Worse still, the secret corps of detectives hired by the NBA had discovered that one of the league’s superstars was snorting heroin. Also that several dozen high-profile white players were habitually tooting and/or smoking coke.
This information was kept under cover lest the integrity of the game be destroyed, many of the league’s marquee players revealed as over-the-top druggies, and the NBA wind up being reduced to a minor blip in Sports America.
Moreover, there were widespread public rumors concerning a drug ring that centered on most of the Phoenix Suns players. A convicted drug dealer testified that he had made “at least thirty” drug sales to Neal Walk, the Suns high-scoring center. Plus, Johnny High, one of the Suns’ best players, had recently been shot and killed in mysterious circumstances. Players in the know around the league understood that this had been a gangland slaying that was directly connected with the Suns’ involvement in the drug trade.
Also, the NBA was negotiating with the Turner Broadcasting System to continue telecasting regular-season games. The 1985–86 season would conclude their $20 million two-year deal—which, subtracting the monies directed to the league office, left each franchise with about $700,000. Useful income, to be sure, but not enough to guarantee an overall profit. And because of the high volume of black players and the drug-related deaths that had the media calling the NBA “an outlaw league,” plus the fact that vast majority of fans who could afford cable TV were white, the negotiations were difficult.
Something had to be done not only to discourage drug use, but also to whiten-up the league. No wonder NBA commissioner David Stern was frantic.
One of Stern’s attempted solutions would involve Micheal Ray Richardson. However, more significantly, the issues concurrent with the unfolding of Sugar Ray’s life mirror what was (and still is) wrong with not only the NBA but also with many aspects of American culture.
To wit: racism, anti-Semitism, selective justice, drug abuse, sexism, macho-bred immaturity, the lack of personal responsibility for misdeeds, and the mindless adoration of celebrities.