The only coaching option available was the CBA in general and the Albany Patroons in particular. Team president Jim Coyne understood that bringing back the colorful Richardson would create a tidal wave of publicity and hopefully attract enough paying customers to put the Patroons back in black ink. Moreover, Coyne personally identified with reclamation projects, simply because he was one himself. In 1992 Coyne was the Albany County executive when he was convicted of bribery, conspiracy, extortion, and mail fraud for accepting a $30,000 bribe from an architect whom he eventually selected to design an all-purpose arena in downtown Albany. Coyne, who insisted that he was innocent, served a four-year stint in a federal prison.
“I saw a lot of ruined lives in prison,” Coyne said. “I saw a lot of people who had lost hope in their futures. Having been there myself, I understand what it can be like to be passed by and then offered a second chance in life. I had read a newspaper article about Micheal Ray and his interest in coaching, and I thought this is a guy who, if given a chance, might just succeed. I thought I could help him.”
Given this golden opportunity, it remained to be seen whether or not Richardson could coach CBA players, a group that one disgruntled CBA coach called “hardened criminals.”
In addition to sending a host of players to the NBA, the CBA had also been a training ground for NBA coaches. Of course, the list of NBA head coaches who had served their apprenticeship in the CBA is headed by Phil Jackson, who coached the Patroons from 1983–87. Others are Flip Sanders, Eric Musselman, Keith Smart, Dennis Johnson, and Brendan Suhr. CBA head coaches becoming NBA assistants include Mark Hughes, Gerald Oliver, Mo McHone, Cazzie Russell, Paul Mokeski, Darrell Walker, Bob Thornton, Henry Bibby, and Kevin Mackey.
Eric Musselman: “The experience gained by coaching in the CBA for one season is equivalent to five years’ coaching in the NBA. That’s because a CBA coach always has to be extremely flexible. We had to coach to the available personnel and be prepared to adjust our game plan to suit the most unexpected circumstances. Players suddenly getting called up to the NBA or leaving without a warning for gigs overseas. So the most important skill that I brought with me into the NBA was concentration. No matter what happened, no matter how crazy things got, I was able to concentrate on the next play, the next substitution, the next game. Once I got into the NBA, things like injuries, personnel changes, and wacky players acting out didn’t faze me that much. After coaching in the CBA, the NBA is a piece of cake.”
Phil Jackson: “Coaching in the CBA made me a much more flexible coach in the sense that I had been too rigid in my player rotations and too obligated to players who had performed well for me in the past. A crucial part of my development was learning how to go with the flow of a ball game.”
Flip Saunders: “I liked the camaraderie of being around the players so much and getting to know them. Because we all had the same goal of getting into the NBA, we realized that we needed each other to get there, and that brought us all very close together. It gave me a model of behavior that I tried to implement when I coached in the NBA. Also, the CBA was where a coach could experiment and try out different concepts without the multimillion-dollar NBA pressure of having to win every night.”
Jim Sleeper was a twenty-year man, having coached the Grand Rapids Hoops, the Maine Lumberjacks, the Bay State Bombardiers, and the Sioux Falls Skyforce. “For all its quirks, the CBA game was more real, more human, and much more fun than the NBA’s dumbed down, arrogant, me-first version. Notice, too, that the only teams who played an interesting, intricate style of basketball were all coached by CBA refugees.”
Pete Myers has been an assistant coach for several NBA teams. “I played in the NBA for eight years, and I found that most of my coaches there (except for Phil Jackson) were very aloof from the players. Like we were the reluctant schoolboys and they were the righteous principals. But when I played in the CBA, I discovered that most of those guys were so hands-on and fun that we were eager to follow their instructions. That’s when I decided that my future was to become a coach. And the kind of coach that I wanted to be was modeled after the guys I played for in the CBA.”
On the negative side of the ledger, Tom Nissalke, Dave Cowens, Bob Hill, Herb Brown, and Joe Mullaney were NBA head coaches who finished their coaching careers in the CBA, while Bill Musselman and George Karl bounced from the NBA to the CBA and then back to the NBA.
Whatever the opportunities for advancement might have been, coaching in the CBA was often unusually challenging and sometimes even hazardous.
Bill Klucas: “I was the coach of the Anchorage Northern Knights, and in the middle of the 1979–80 season, we embarked on what I’m sure was a record-setting road trip that lasted thirty-two days. We flew into Rochester, New York, and from there on we traveled everywhere else in a van that I had to drive. Every article of clothing we brought had to be either hand-washed in a motel sink or not washed act all. It’s not surprising that some of us got on each other’s nerves. I’d estimate we had about a dozen blood-letting fistfights.”
A few years later, Klucas was coaching the Rochester, Minnesota, Flyers, and at the tail end of the 1987–88 season, his team was being routed by Rockford. There was a brouhaha during halftime that could be overheard in the adjacent visitor’s locker room. It seems that there was a soda dispenser in the home team’s locker room, and during Klucas’s halftime excoriation of his players’ effort, David Thirdkill (an NBA vet) walked over to the apparatus and started filling a paper cup with soda. Seeing this, Klucas freaked out. Because of their miserable performance so far, there’d be no soda for the players.
“Don’t tell me what to do, motherfucker!” said Thirdkill.
“I’m the goddamn boss here!” insisted Klucas.
“You ain’t shit!” Thirdkill said as he continued filling the cup. Whereupon Klucas reached over, reached out, and knocked the half-filled cup to the floor.
Thirdkill reacted by grabbing Klucas in a headlock and threatening to punch his face to jelly.
The other players took a few moments to consider the situation. Eventually, a few of them interceded and broke up the melee before Thirdkill before could actually start punching away.
Klucas was fired later that night. And guess who was named the interim coach?
David Thirdkill.
If Thirdkill never again played in the CBA, Klucas survived to coach several more CBA teams over the years.
Sometimes the abuse CBA coaches suffered was verbal: Frankie Sanders had been San Antonio’s top draft pick out of Southern University in 1978, but his NBA career lasted for only sixty-eight games in abbreviated stints with the Spurs, the Celtics, and the Kings. Still, he was Albany’s leading scorer in 1983–84 when Phil Jackson led the Patroons to the CBA championship. Sanders believed that his ticket back into the NBA depended upon how many points per game he averaged. To make this happen, Sanders felt he should be playing forty-eight minutes in each and every game. That’s why, whenever Jackson removed him from the action, Sanders would shout, “You son of a bitch! You’re messing with my game!” If most of the fans on hand heard Sanders’s loud complaint, Jackson thought it best to never respond.
Back in the late 1980s Dave Cowens was coaching the Bay State Bombardiers and became increasingly annoyed when his opposite number, Bill Musselman, jumped up and down as he loudly complained to the refs when even the most noncontroversial calls went against him. Finally, without saying a world, the six-foot-nine Cowens approached the five-foot-eight Musselman, grabbed him by the lapels of his trademark blue leather sports jacket, lifted him off the floor, and shook him until Musselman was as limp as a rag doll. Still wordless, Cowens then dropped Musselman to the floor, then calmly returned to his seat on the Bombardiers’ bench. The referees were laughing too hard to hit Cowens with a technical foul—and Musselman subsequently confined his elocutions to whispered instructions in his team’s huddles.
After the game, Cowens had nothing to say to the media, but Musselman did—claiming that Cowens was one of his best friends.
In April of 1986, Jackson’s Patroons were on the verge of being swept in a playoff series. The fourth game was being played in Albany, and the competition was fierce. The result was a 113–112 series-ending win by the visitors with the balance being tipped by a horrendous last-second call by one of the refs. As soon as the final buzzer sounded, Jackson’s accumulated frustrations overflowed as he grabbed a folding chair and hurled it onto the court. It was his last official act as a CBA coach.
Herb Brown: “Nobody wanted to be in the CBA. Not the coaches, not the players, not the referees. That’s why we were all pissed off all of the time.”
And even in its halcyon days, the CBA itself was always on the verge of disaster.
Jay Polan, longtime owner of the Rockford Lightning: “The operating budget of most CBA teams was $1 million per season and buying a new or old franchise cost about $800,000 in the golden age of the early and mid-1980s. From the NBA contract we each got about $20,000, enough to cover our league dues. There was no TV money, and we had to pay for the radio broadcasts of our games by selling advertisements. Some of our income came from signs and banners posted around the arena that we sold to local businesses, also ads in our yearbook, team T-shirts, logos, trinkets, and the beer concessions. But our primary source of revenue was gate receipts. At Rockford, our break-even attendance was about four thousand, and our average attendance was about thirty-five hundred. The franchises in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Gary, Indiana, usually made money. The rest of us lost anywhere from 250K to 400K every year. Owning a CBA franchise was either a tax write-off or an expensive hobby. But, for a while there were always wealthy businessmen ready to buy and bring a CBA franchise into their cities because they were positive that the other owners were knuckleheads and that only they knew how to turn a profit.”
Joe O’Hara owned the Patroons for five years: “Here’s how to make a small fortune . . . Start with a big fortune and buy a CBA franchise.”
However, the CBA that Richardson rejoined was much different than the CBA he had left seventeen years ago. One major factor was a radical decline in fan attendance due to the proliferation of NBA games on cable TV. The other negative influence was Isaiah Thomas.
It’s indisputable that Thomas was a truly great player—one of the best point guards ever to play in the NBA. He was the quarterback of the Detroit Pistons back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990. However, he was despised by most of his opponents for being one of the baddest of the Bad Boys. Indeed, one of Thomas’s most despicable maneuvers was to deliberately step on the plant foot of an opponent just as he was intending to become airborne to shoot a layup, thereby creating the distinct possibility of inflicting a career-ending injury. Thomas’s habitual cheap shots were the primary reason why Michael Jordan refused to be a member of the original Dream Team that cruised to a gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics if Thomas was also selected.
In any event, Thomas’s post-playing career was an unmitigated disaster.
Immediately upon his retirement, “Zeke” was the executive vice president of the newly created Toronto Raptors. During the four years there, the Raptors averaged a mere twenty-two wins per season. The season after Thomas quit, Toronto made the playoffs.
Next up for Thomas was being the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, a team that had just lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals. With virtually an intact holdover roster, the Pacers won fifteen fewer games in Thomas’s first year at the helm. Indiana continued to underachieve for the duration of Zeke’s three-year stint in the command seat, and when he was replaced by Rick Carlisle in 2003, Indiana advanced to the Eastern Conference finals.
In 2006 Thomas became the coach of the New York Knicks. After a miserable 33-49 season, the team’s befuddled owner, James Dolan, rewarded his incompetence by promoting Thomas to the dual title of president–general manager. Once ensconced in the ultimate power seat, Thomas made a series of disastrous player moves. But the capper of his time in New York was being found guilty of sexually harassing a former employee of the organization, a verdict that ultimately cost the Knicks $11.6 million.
Thomas’s involvement with, and destruction of, the CBA dated back to 1999 when he purchased the league, including the arena leases, the basketballs, the uniforms, and jock straps for the sum of $10 million. His motivation was totally rational: the NBA was looking to establish a minor league that would serve as a farm system for the big-league teams, a training situation for prospective NBA coaches and referees, and a place where young players could develop their games.
Since the CBA already had in place everything that the NBA seemed to require and would enable a smooth, speedy implementation of David Stern’s plan, Thomas’s $10 million gamble had every chance to be a profitable one.
Two weeks after he became the impresario of the CBA, Thomas unilaterally cut players’ salaries by one-third, his rationale being that making the “CBA a younger league” would increase its appeal to the NBA. Thomas also made the rounds of the CBA franchises, promising financial support and also using his smiling media persona to create a steady diet of publicity in each city.
In March 2000, the NBA offered Thomas $11 million for the CBA, but wanting much more of a return, Zeke refused. Three months later, Thomas was offered the head coaching position in Indiana, the caveat being a rule prohibiting an NBA coach gaining an unfair advantage in player procurement by owning a league. Thomas responded by signing a letter of intent to sell the CBA to the NBA Players Association, a transaction that never took place.
One month later, the NBA announced that it would establish its own minor league, the National Basketball Development League. With that announcement, the CBA instantly became worthless. In October, Thomas signed the CBA into a “blind trust” that sealed the books of every team in the league and prevented them from paying their bills. Three months after Thomas became the Pacers head coach, the CBA folded and declared bankruptcy.
Even before Thomas’s purchase of the CBA, the once-profitable Albany Patroons were hemorrhaging money. That’s why in 1992 team owner Joe O’Hara accepted the sponsorship of a local car dealership and changed the team’s name to the Capital City Pontiacs. Too bad what was left of the Patroons’ fan base was totally alienated. O’Hara was forced to sell the Pontiacs to a group of Connecticut businessmen who relocated the franchise to the Nutmeg State. When the Hartford Hellcats failed to catch fire, the team folded after two seasons and the rights to the franchise were dormant.
Several businessmen decided to resurrect the CBA in 2005, with the league’s flagship franchise being reconstituted in Albany. Coaching the Patroons seemed to provide the only opportunity for Richardson to get involved with professional basketball in his home country.
Despite Jim Coyne’s enthusiasm, Richardson’s best friend was puzzled. Otis Birdsong and Sugar Ray had been buddies during Richardson’s four-year tenure with the Nets. “Of all the guys I played with throughout my career,” said Birdsong, “Micheal would be the last one I would have chosen to say he wanted to get into coaching.” Indeed, the accepted knowledge was that in his playing days Richardson was the Anti-Coach.
So, then, upon his return to New York’s capital city, what kind of CBA coach would Micheal Ray Richardson turn out to be?
Of the many coaches he had played for, Richardson mostly modeled his approach after Bill Musselman. This meant establishing a close enough relationship with agents to compile a Black Book that tracked the comings and goings of NBA veterans and other blue-chip players. Who among them were headed overseas? Who were returning to the States? When? And why? (Poor play, difficulty adjusting to the strange culture, positive drug tests, financial shakiness of the team, and so on.)
Being a Musselman disciple also mean being harsh and demanding with his players. Berating them in team huddles for misplays caused by “brain lock,” screaming at referees, and above all being a stickler for the rules.
So, during a road game against the Pittsburgh Xplosion in Richardson’s first season on the Patroons command seat, one of the home team’s players was whistled for his seventh personal foul. According to CBA rules, Richardson’s Patroons were entitled to shoot a technical foul and then retain possession. However, when the refs neglected to award Albany the opportunity to shoot the mandated free throw, and even though the game was already safely won, Richardson violated the boundaries of the coach’s box as he stalked them and showered them with fiery abuse. As a result, Richardson was hit with a T, and Pittsburgh was awarded a freebie instead of the Patroons.
Throughout his rookie season as a head coach, Richardson also followed Musselman’s footsteps in strenuously objecting to the numerous petty aspects of what amounted to business as usual in the CBA:
Richardson was steamed when he discovered that the Maryland Green Hawks played their home games in a high-school gym that featured a cozy schoolboy three-point line.
Sugar Ray went berserk upon realizing that one corner of the court in Buffalo was dark because of a burned out overhead light.
Nor did he quietly accept the fact that, whereas each home team was supposed to supply five towels for the visitor’s bench, in Quebec there were only two.
He also publically voiced his distress when, for several home games back in Albany, some glitch in the laundering process forced the Patroons to wear their home yellow jerseys with their away green shorts.
Unfortunately, Richardson also reprised Musselman’s habit of refusing to shake hands with opposing coaches after games that the Patroons lost. Indeed, Sugar Ray’s game-time behavior was so tempestuous that several league officials chastised him and warned that the continuance of his antics would force them to fine and suspend him.
Why, then, had Musselman gotten away with such abusive behavior? Because, no matter how over the top he’d been, he possessed an honorable discharge from the NBA, whereas Richardson was an outlaw.
Richardson deviated from Musselman’s habitual game plan only in his simplified offense. Instead of the dozens of sets and hundreds of plays that Musselman used, Richardson’s Patroons employed a simple series of high pick and rolls, plus some down picks, and low-post play. Because of the high turnover in personnel in Richardson’s return to the CBA, his playbook could easily be mastered by newly arrived players in a single practice session.
Even though they failed to make the playoffs, Richardson was hailed as a near genius for coaxing his team to a semirespectable record of 20-28.
Before returning to Albany for the 2006–7 season, Richardson revealed that he yearned to live and work in Europe—particularly in France, where his wife and two children remained during the CBA seasons. He vowed that his second CBA season would be his last. His dream job was to operate as some NBA team’s European scout. “Until then,” he said, “I’ll do my job. When it’s over, it’s over, and I’ll move on. I’m a survivor.”
But what indeed turned out to be Sugar Ray’s last go-round in the CBA was fraught with even more trouble than he could have imagined.
Derek Rowland had been Richardson’s teammate with the 1988 CBA champion Patroons. The amiable Rowland had begun his professional basketball career in 1982 when, in addition to working fulltime flipping stomach burgers at a local McDonald’s, he was hired by Phil Jackson to be the Patroons’ practice player at twenty-five dollars per week. From there, the sweet-shooting, defensive-minded Roland blossomed into a perennial CBA all-star. Subsequently, a chronically sore knee greatly impaired his effectiveness during a brief stint with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1986. Rowland’s active career ended in 2000, but since his Jones still itched, he was happy to accept Sugar Ray’s offer to be the Patroons one and only assistant coach.
With Rowland on the bench for every game, the Patroons won twelve of their initial fifteen, then the CBA suddenly changed the rules. The new dispensation gave each team a choice: either bring ten players and no assistant coach on the road, or bring nine layers and an assistant. Richardson was outraged . . . again. It seemed obvious to him and to Rowland as well that the overnight ruling was aimed to hamper the Patroons. Perhaps the CBA littlewigs couldn’t abide the possibility of Richardson leading his team to a championship. Just think of the negative publicity! But because of the fulltime up-tempo pace Richardson had instituted, he absolutely needed to have ten players at his disposal.
Rowland reports that, despite the normal CBA craziness, Richardson was much calmer than he had been the season before. However, there were still signs that Sugar Ray might still have been up to his old destructive tricks.
“In February,” Rowland says, “Sugar simply disappeared for a few days, leaving me to coach the team for a couple of games. When he came back, he offered no excuses, and I guess we were all too afraid to ask him where he’d been and what he’d been doing.”
In addition, Richardson missed two games to work a fantasy camp in Las Vegas (with Darryl Dawkins) during the NBA’s All-Star weekend. Nobody in Albany’s front office was pleased.
Meanwhile, Richardson had consulted general manager Jim Coyne about the possibility of making a trade for Marvin Phillips, a power forward with Pittsburgh. According to the CBA bylaws, Coyne was the only person in the Patroons’ organization who was authorized to sign, waive, or trade a player—and Coyne was dubious about adding Phillips. “Micheal pretty much assured me that the trade was not going to happen,” said Coyne, “so I went to the Bahamas for a week. When I returned to Albany, I learned that Richardson had invoked my name and gone through with the trade.”
In response to Coyne’s public complaint about being undercut by his coach, Richardson had this to say to the Albany Times-Union: “This isn’t the YMCA. Are you kidding me?”
It was too late for Coyne to rescind the deal—especially since Phillips’s first appearance with the Patroons, he scored a ton of points in a runaway win over the Indiana Alley Cats. After the game, Richardson said to Wilkin, “Do they still want to criticize my moves?”
Bizarre and downright illegal trades were common occurrences throughout the checkered history of the CBA.
The most one-sided exchange occurred in 1988 when the coach of the Rockford Lightning (Charley Rosen) traded a stone-handed seven footer to the Tri-Cities Thunder for an official sweat suit. Tuned out that the player in question hit a critical basket that beat Rockford in an important game just a week before he was cut. And the Thunder sweat suit was much too small to fit the six-eight Rosen.
Still another highly unusual trade was precipitated by the flight of a paper airplane: In the middle of the 1987–88 season, the Wyoming Wildcatters were in deep financial trouble. Their host city—Casper, the Friendly Ghost Town—simply lacked the population to support a CBA team. Desperate to boost their gate, the Wildcatters’ owners decided to run a sensational halftime giveaway.
During the midgame intermission, a brand-new Chevrolet sedan was driven out to center court. The center page of every two-dollar program was stamped with numbers unique to that specific program. The fans were invited to pull out the center page, fashion it into a paper airplane, stand anywhere they wished along the sidelines, and launch their missile toward the car. The first one that flew through the open sunroof would win the car.
The car dealer had assured the Wildcatters’ management that such accuracy was virtually impossible, especially if the arena’s ventilation grids were tilted just so and the fans turned on full blast.
Of course, one lucky spectator defied the odds.
The team owners were aghast, and so was the car dealer.
What could be done?
To refuse the car to the winner would immediately cause the franchise to fold. The dealer, in his desire to keep the Wildcatters in town, agreed to sell the car to the team for $5,000.
The very next day, the Wildcatters contacted the league’s wealthiest team and allowed the Rockford Lightning to buy their best player—center Brad Wright—for the five grand.
Wright only lasted in Rockford for six games before being called up to the Denver Nuggets where he remained for the rest of the season. And the Wildcatters continued to operate on a shoestring, losing huge amounts of money before ceasing operations after the subsequent season.
So, even though Micheal Ray’s transgression was a comparatively minor one, a serious rift had developed between Jim Coyne and the coach he’d gone out on a limb to hire.
Another area of friction between Coyne and Richardson was even more personal. “Coyne’s wife was babying all the players,” said Richardson. “At one point, I just told her I didn’t want her in my gym, in my locker room, messing with my players.”
Richardson then brushed off all of Coyne’s objections. “Part of my recovery,” said Micheal Ray, “is to tell the truth. I have to be honest with myself and honest with other people. Sometimes it gets me in trouble, but that’s just the way it is. It’s either yes or no. There ain’t no in-between.”
If Coyne was looking for a reason to get rid of Richardson, his controversial coach soon presented him with a dramatic excuse.