“I was flat-out killing people. I really used to get jacked up against the white guards because I didn’t like the straight up-and-down way they played. Maybe they reminded me of the team that beat us for the high-school championship. Or the crackers that used to bust my ass in Lubbock. It was a white world, and I was just another underdog. And even though Isiah Thomas was blacker than the inside of my ass, he had a white game, so I went after him like he’d just slapped my momma.”
Indeed, Richardson took to walking up to Thomas in Detroit’s locker room and saying, “I’m gonna bust your ass up tonight.” And much more often than not, Richardson made his predictions come true.
Fast forward to a preseason game in 1984 when Richardson was a three-time All-Star and playing with the New Jersey Nets. Pace Mannion was Richardson’s backup and says this about the game: “We were playing the Utah Jazz in Miami and it was John Stockton’s rookie season. Utah’s starting point guard was a black guy named Ricky Green, and Sugar played no defense against him and never even tried to score. Then Stockton replaced Green, and on the very first play, the rookie attacked Sugar’s handle and stole the ball. Well, Sugar really got pissed. The next five times the Nets had possession, he backed Stockton down to the free throw line, then turned and buried soft jumpers. Literally five times in a row. Then, as he ran past Utah’s bench, Sugar yelled at coach Jerry Sloan, ‘Y-y-you b-b-better g-get that white b-b-boy out of here.’ So Sloan yanked Stockton and put Green back in. And Sugar went back to his who-cares game.
“After the game, I went over to Stockton and said, ‘The lesson I hope you learned is that white guys should never, ever even try to rip Sugar’s dribble.’”
In fact, at the time, Richardson’s attitude toward white opponents mirrored the racial divide in the NBA. As hard as they might play against one another, black players never exchanged hard fouls. Yet before the institution of penalties for flagrant fouls, blacks often made sure to foul white players with sufficient force to send them sprawling. Hey, no matter how hard the contact, the officials could only call one foul per hit.
It was also common for the brothers from both teams to party together after games. Most pointedly, according to Steve Mix who played with Detroit in the ’70s, the Pistons’ black players and white players were so antagonistic that the two groups never communicated and dressed in opposite sides of the locker rooms.
And the refs?
In 2007 Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers published a study based on more than a quarter of a million player-game observations over a fifteen-year period (1991–2004). They concluded that white refs, by a factor of 4 percent, called more fouls on black players than on white players and that black refs reversed the process in precisely the same proportion. Moreover, the fouls called by an all-black or all-white officiating crew were even more biased.
And since in the 2013–14 season 48.4 percent of the NBA’s refs were black as opposed to 79.5 percent of the players (who logged one thousand or more minutes), the study estimated that the biased calls resulted in two games per season in which the “wrong” team won. The difference, perhaps, in positioning or even qualifying for the playoffs? As well as the subsequent rankings for the annual drafts?
While Price and Wolfers judged this bias unintentional, their findings suggested a similar subconscious racial discrimination throughout our society, from job applications to the makeup of police forces, even to a teacher’s choosing which students to call on to respond to easy or difficult questions. In other words, racial bias is cultural reflex.
Nevertheless, in his second season in what the players call “The League,” Micheal Ray Richardson became a superstar.
“That season and the next one were great times for this poor black boy from Pigshit, Texas,” says Richardson. “Now, the New York fans and the New York press were on my side. I mean I could take a bite out of the Big Apple any time I was hungry, and I was hanging with celebrities like Reggie Jackson. Night clubs, women . . . I was living the high life and running wild all over town. Like the song says, ‘Looking for love in all the wrong places.’”
Among his many other attributes, Darryl Dawkins has always been an acute observer of on-court and in-bed NBA action. “I think,” he says, “that the main reason why NBA players get hooked on sex is loneliness. People usually don’t think of NBA players as being lonely, but they are. The loneliness comes when you don’t trust women. All the guys are constantly warning each other to be wary of bad women who are just looking to grab some of their money. Like the ones who borrow fancy clothes and jewelry from their friends so they won’t look like they’re on the make when they meet up with players at a club. But what they really want is to get married to single guys or get pregnant with the married guys. Either way, they’re looking for a big payoff.”
Dawkins recalls the story of one perpetual All-Star who had lived with a woman for several years. “She kept on nagging him to get married, but the guy kept putting her off. This only made her nagging get worse and worse until one day they got into a serious argument that forced the poor bastard to give her a gentle shove just to get her out of his face. When the bitch sued him for assaulting her, it came out that the name he knew her by wasn’t her real one—and her whole history was also phony. Eventually, they settled out of court for two hundred grand.”
As a result of this and similar scenarios, older and wiser players limit their womanizing to clearly defined one-night stands with beautiful women. “Then you cast about for redheads with her titties up,” says Dawkins, “or big-assed blondes, or skinny brunettes, or sisters with this or that. So it’s loneliness that leads to lust.”
According to Dawkins, “Then, now, and forever, the NBA’s pussy heaven is Salt Lake City. That’s one of the main reasons why blacks want to play with the Utah Jazz. The second-best pussy capital is Atlanta, with New Orleans a close third. By far the worst place to get laid is New York City, only because the girls there can’t be trusted.”
When connecting with newly encountered willing women in New York, the players would keep some cash in their pockets, then give their wallets, watches, and jewelry to a less-adventurous teammate for safekeeping.
(In the 2015–16 season, Derrick Williams of the Knicks was robbed of $600,000 worth of jewelry while he was sleeping by two women he had had sex with in his apartment.)
If Richardson was sleeping with all comers, one thing he wasn’t doing was indulging in any other kind of drug besides an occasional joint.
Back in the sixties, smoking reefer had several purposes: It was a groovy party drug, a communion ritual for the counterculture rebels, and, as such, also a blow against the empire. Among NBA players burning a doobie was also an act of community, albeit an exclusive one. It was also a way of passing the long hours on the road in hotel rooms: just stuff wet towels under and over the doors and puff away in safety. Watching college football games on Saturday afternoons and/or NFL games on Sundays usually attracted those teammates who indulged. And good pot was always available.
(Full disclosure: As long as the late Steve Patterson played with the Cleveland Cavaliers—1971–75—I was the team’s primary source of marijuana during their trips to New York. I’d pick up Steve at the airport, take him to my apartment, where he napped and gave me the orders; then he’d squeeze one-ounce baggies into the fingers of his gloves, and we’d both proceed to the Garden of Delights.)
During Neal Walk’s tenure in the NBA (1968–77), his bearded, hippie nonchalance encouraged his black teammates to accept his presence at their postgame light-ups. “Guys on both teams would gather in somebody’s hotel room,” he reports, “order some pizza and beer, then keep the joints and the laughter flowing. It was beautiful.”
The NBA has always employed a clandestine “security” department, primarily to avoid point-shaving scandals and also to track any drug abuse and/or gambling debts that might make players vulnerable to blackmail. Despite the private claims of several players (among them Richardson, Dawkins, and Walk) that from 50 to 60 percent of NBA players were smoking marijuana on a regular basis in the later 1970s and early 1980s, twenty years later Commissioner David Stern downplayed the adverse effect on the league. “Initially we went through a period of ‘Oh, my goodness,’” said Stern. “But we eventually came to understand it’s a reflection of society.” Stern conceded that drugs were once a problem for the league but no longer a serious threat. “Nowadays we see ourselves as fighting a small portion of a larger problem.”
Whatever that means.
However, once cocaine replaced pot as the NBA players’ drug of choice, Stern’s rather dismissive attitude became much more aggressive. And before long Richardson was in Stern’s crosshairs.
Ah, but like so many NBA hooplings, Sugar Ray believed he was invulnerable. His youth would last forever. The riches of the world, of his world, were inexhaustible. The drugs stretched the party of his life into infinity, while beautiful women beyond counting begged to be fucked.
Meanwhile, within the safe confines of the court, Richardson scored 15.3 points per game and led the NBA in both assists (10.1 per game) and steals (2.23 per game), compelling Holzman to increase his average playing time to over thirty-seven minutes. Micheal Ray’s sterling play was officially acknowledged by his appearance in the 1980 All-Star Game. (His stats in that elite if casual competition included 13 minutes played, 3-7 shooting, 1 rebound, 2 assists, and 6 points.) In addition, Richardson was later named to the NBA’s All-Defense First Team.
There’s no doubt that while Richardson was indeed one of the league’s premier defenders, it should be noted that most of the NBA’s postseason awards are questionable at best. For example, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Mark Eaton, Manute Bol, Shaquille O’Neal, and Dwight Howard have all been named to the All-Defense First Team on numerous occasions. In truth, Robinson, Eaton, Shaq, Bol, and Howard had difficulty defending any opponent who could turn-face-and-shoot. What they could do, though, was come from the weak side, block shots, and intimidate others—a skill set that too many of the writers and broadcasters who vote for this award confuse with actually playing defense.
While a shot smacked into the high-priced seats might be dramatic, the smackee’s team retains possession. Plus, Howard and Robinson were so focused on blocks that smart opponents could easily sucker them to the ball, then make slick passes to the neglected big men they were supposed to be guarding for unopposed layups and dunks.
Moreover, although blocks are meaningful, they are not the end all and be all of good defense. Back in the days before blocked shots became an official statistic, intrepid sportswriters would sometimes track the shots blocked by Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Their average in select games would range from ten to fifteen. Nowadays, a player averaging three plus per game is usually enough to lead the league. In truth, alert and timely rotations have much more significant impacts on ball games.
As for Malone and Bryant . . . the former was strong enough to bully opponents off of prime position in the low post; otherwise his defense consisted of gambling to intercept entry passes and/or swiping at the ball while his opposite number raised the ball to launch a shot. More often than not, these gambles resulted in unchallenged shots for the bad guys.
Bryant’s primary defensive tactic was to abandon his man and follow the bouncing ball looking for steals and breakaway dunkers. Snappy ball movement by the opposing teams would easily locate the left-open man and result in an uncontested shot or a foul on one of Kobe’s teammates.
And here’s the kicker: in 2012 the writers and broadcasters made Tyson Chandler the Defensive Player of the Year. Meanwhile, in a vote of the league’s coaches, Chandler was relegated to the All-Defense Second Team.
Another postseason honor that’s even more bogus is the Most Valuable Player award. Just what does this award actually mean? That the recipient is the best player in the league? Since every player has a different role on his team, perhaps a game of one on one would be the only way to determine this. But what if the candidates are, say, a big lumbering center and a swift point guard, each with vastly different responsibilities? Nor are statistics any kind of realistic measure for determining the identity of an MVP.
In most cases the award is presented to the “best” player on the best team. But what about somebody like Kobe Bryant with the woeful 2012–13 Lakers? Subtract him and, instead of (barely) making the playoffs, the Lakers would have finished at the bottom of the league. Is that valuable enough?
Perhaps the best definition of MVP comes from a mysterious Tweeter whose handle is “Old Hoss Radbourne,” which is the name of a durable Major League pitcher in the late nineteenth century: “My criterion for most valuable is the player whose kidnapping would net the most money.”
Other postseason awards are even more dubious. Phil Jackson is a certified Hall of Fame coach, having won a record eleven championships. Yet he was awarded one solitary coach of the year award (for the 1995–96 season). How could this be? Because the players at his command included Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago, plus Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. And, the attitude of the media Muppets who voted was, How could Jackson’s teams not win with such outstanding players at his command? All he had to do was roll the ball out on to the court and let MJ, Pip, Shaq, and Kobe do their thing, right?
Wrong. In fact it’s extremely difficult to win when you’re “supposed” to win. Colossal superstars invariably have colossal egos that a coach has to carefully nurture. Other season-long chores that concerned Jackson was battling any feeling of complacency, of cruising through games with the belief that they could turn on their collective and individual A games in the clutch. All the while, establishing and maintaining the undivided attention of his players.
Plus, Jordan had been in the NBA for five ringless seasons before Jackson took over the Bulls—winning his initial championship in MJ’s sixth season. Pippen was a two-year NBA vet before winning his first ring in his fourth season under PJ. Kobe and Shaq totaled ten fruitless NBA campaigns until Jackson led them to the title in his first season in Los Angeles.
And if any combination of super-duper stars is sufficient to win a championship, why didn’t the otherwise transcendent trio of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain ever attain this goal?
Here’s another egregious miscall by the writers and broadcasters: In 2000 Jason Kidd won the Pacific Division’s sportsmanship award. This, despite the fact that when Kidd, Jim Jackson, and Jamaal Mashburn were teammates with the 1996–97 Dallas Mavericks, they refused to pass the ball to one another because they were all sleeping with the same woman. And, of course, years later Kidd was charged with beating his wife. Then in 2013 he was suspended for the initial three games of his coaching career for a DWI arrest and conviction.
In any case, Richardson had reason to celebrate during that breakout season of 1979–80. To reward his bona fide status, he supplemented his Porsche with a BMW and a Jaguar. On off nights when the Knicks were in New York, one of Richardson’s cars would be routinely parked illegally in front of the city’s most exclusive nightclubs. His celebrity insured that he never received a parking ticket.
The 1980-81 season brought more hoop-time glory for Richardson: 16.4 points, 7.9 assists, and 6.9 rebounds in 40.2 minutes per game. Plus another appearance in the All-Star Game, as well as repeating as an NBA All-Defense First Teamer.
Aside from being a good shooter and spectacular finisher, Richardson had quick hands, quick feet, long limbs, as well as the ability to see a game unfold a heartbeat faster than anybody else on the court. Plus he was more brash, restless, and bold than cooler-than-thou NBA stars were supposed to be.
His peers had total respect for Richardson. Magic Johnson said that Micheal Ray always came right at him: “He talked plenty of trash but he always was able to back it up.” Isiah Thomas once told a sportswriter that Richardson was the one opponent he was afraid to face. Buck Williams spoke of Richardson’s ability to deliver in the clutch, saying, “In the last two minutes, it’s his game.” Michael Jordan claimed there were only two players that he hated to play against: A tough defensive specialist named Alvin Robertson . . . and Micheal Ray Richardson.
An underground New York newspaper, Weekly Soho News, put Richardson on a cover that anointed him “THE GREAT BLACK HOPE.”
All this as one of his teammates introduced Richardson to the dubious pleasures of snorting coke. At the time, research by the Los Angeles Times found that 75 percent of NBA players were using cocaine.
His new-found habit explains why Richardson was so exuberant after every victory and so animatedly distressed after every loss. Win or lose, his postgame behavior was so over the top that his teammates tried in vain to calm him down.
Coach Hubie Brown was destined for the Naismith Hall of Fame, but during the 1980–81 season, he discovered that the roster of his Atlanta Hawks was top heavy with drug abusers. “I’m naive,” he says. “I never smoked a joint or did coke. I never needed that stuff. At the same time, one of the principal rules of leadership is to realize that you can’t attack negative behavior without understanding it. So I paid $1,200 out of my own pocket to consult a pro. I didn’t want to lose a damn ball game when I needed thirty-two minutes of all-out play from a guy who could only give me twenty-four because of drugs. So I learned the reasons and methods of drug use.”
Brown learned that NBA players sniffed cocaine after games for two main reasons: To prolong that razor-edge of physical, emotional, and mental awareness that was necessary for them to compete against the world’s greatest hoopers. And to maintain that same sharpness when engaging in after-game sex.
“Most of all,” says Brown, “I learned to recognize the symptoms of drug abuse.”
As a result, Brown would often confront a player he was positive was using coke, going so far as grabbing him by the throat and shoving him forcefully against a locker. But the players just laughed at Brown. And when Brown took his complaints to Ted Turner, the team’s owner downplayed the use of coke as being a recreational drug.
Brown was fired after that dismal season and set up shop behind a microphone, doing color commentary of NBA telecasts until returning to coach the Knicks (1982–87). Another stint as a sportscaster led to his being hired to coach Memphis Grizzlies (2002–5).
After his stellar 1980–81 season, Richardson made a fateful decision. Instead of returning to Denver during the summer, he decided to stay in New York. During that time, the Knicks made several roster moves. The ones that impacted Richardson the most was parting company with his two closest friends on the team—Mike Glenn and Ray Williams. The news devastated Richardson, and the agenda of his new circle of friends did not include basketball.
“One night I was with some women and some guys from Trinidad, just drinking and partying. Then one of them brought out a sack of coke. I did some serious sniffing but to no effect. It was simply some bullshit stuff. Two weeks later, I came across the same folks again and this time they showed me how to freebase. Man! That shit was goooood!
“That first hit felt like the best thing that ever happened to me, and the best thing that could ever happen to me. I was invisible and invincible. On top of the world. Every worry that was buzzing around in my mind was instantly gone. Responsibility didn’t mean a thing. It was a freaky drug experience with all of my fantasies becoming possible. I could get it on with three or four girls at a time and go at it all night long. Man! I barely knew who I was, only that whoever I was I was king of the fucking world. Make that king of the universe. I spent the next seven years trying to duplicate that very first high. And from the get-go, basketball didn’t seem as important as getting off.
“Coming down was a bitch, though. I’d get depressed. What the fuck did I do? Where the fuck was I? How much money had I spent? A gram cost a hundred dollars and would last for about two hours. My only consolation was that about one out of every three players in the NBA was also freebasing, so once the season started, there were high-time parties going on in every city in the league.”
Prompted by his drug buddies, Richardson began haunting the drug houses. “Racing up flights of stairs past junkies nodding on the landings. The peep hole in the door. Three guys sitting at a table, each one holding an Uzi. Then I’d make my transaction and they’d push me out the door. They knew who I was, but I didn’t give a fuck. They even charged me less. That’s when I failed my first drug test.”
Under the rules then on the books, Richardson was assessed a first strike and issued a warning that another positive test would compel him to enroll in a rehab program. But Richardson couldn’t stop freebasing.
Even so, Richardson’s numbers for the 1981–82 season were still admirable—17.9 points, 7.0 assists, and 6.9 rebounds per game. Good enough to merit a third All-Star Game appearance. But he was increasingly careless with the ball and guilty of too many unforced turnovers. His defense also suffered, to the point where Isiah Thomas was no longer afraid of him—and Micheal Ray would never again be voted to either the All-Defense first or even second team.
Yet despite his lack of focus and declining interest in basketball, Richardson still had several highly impressive performances: “We were playing a Sunday afternoon home game against Houston, and I’d gotten so high that I completely forgot about the game. I’d been up all night, and I’d just smoked a bowl at 8:35 a.m. when I suddenly remembered that in less than five hours I’d be playing in a nationally televised game! Fuck me! So I took a long hot shower, and since freebasing is very dehydrating, I drank a quart of orange juice. I got to the Garden at ten thirty, took another hot shower, gulped down another quart of orange juice, ate two bacon-and-egg sandwiches, and suddenly it was time to start our warm-ups. While I was loosening up, I kept telling myself that I’d never do this again. ‘Please, God. Get me out of this one and I’ll go cold turkey. I’ll check into a rehab clinic. I’ll do anything. Then I went out and had me a triple-double. So I got stoned for the next twenty-four hours.”
And if Richardson still had sufficient awareness to be the Knicks’ high scorer, the 1981–82 squad featured the underwhelming likes of Bill Cartwright, aka “Medical Bill” because of his chronic injuries; the declining talents of Maurice Lucas; the last gasp of both Campy Russell and Randy Smith; journeyman Sly Williams; as well as Marvin Webster, who might have had the worst hands in NBA history. In Red Holzman’s last season occupying the command seat, the Knicks were fortunate to win thirty-three games.
Then, in a postgame interview, Richardson’s midseason analysis of the team’s condition became perhaps the most famous quote in the history of the league:
Q: What do you think is happening to this team?
A: The ship be sinking.
Q: How far can it sink?
A: The sky’s the limit.
At the time, Richardson said that he was quoted out of context, a claim that smacked of a desperate and flimsy self-defense. These days Richardson stands by the line. “At the time we were sinking.” And he can now look back on his infamous interview with a sense of humor: “What I should’ve done was get a patent on it, like Pat Riley did with ‘three-peat.’ Then I would’ve been rich.”
Years later, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation publically claimed that there might have been more nefarious ways that Richardson had actually enriched himself during that 1981–82 season.