In late March 2007, the Patroons were losing at home in the opening game of the CBA’s championship series when a courtside fan began heckling Richardson. Burning with frustration, Richardson shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” As the game neared its conclusion, another heckler was on his case. This time, Richardson’s response was even more offensive: “Shut the fuck up, you faggot!”
Surprisingly Jim Coyne said that he had no intention of reprimanding Richardson. “He’s an adult and he should know better,” said Coyne. “He knows if he’s acting appropriately or in appropriately.”
But Coyne was no so sanguine the next morning when the Times-Union printed a pregame interview with Richardson. The topic under discussion was the possibility that Coyne would offer Richardson a contract to coach the summertime version of the Patroons in the United States Basketball League. Referring to the chance that contractual negotiations might be tricky, Richardson said this: “I’ve got big-time lawyers. I’ve got big-time Jew lawyers.”
His interviewer then suggested that Richardson’s casual remark might be offensive because it supports the stereotype that Jews are shrewd and crafty.
Richardson scoffed at the suggestion. “Are you kidding me? They’ve got the best security system in the world. Have you ever been to an airport in Tel Aviv? They’re real crafty. Listen, they are hated all over the world, so they’ve got to be crafty.”
And why were they hated?
“If you really think about it, everybody knows that the Jews are running the country. Which is not a bad thing, you know what I mean?”
How are they running the country?
“They got a lot of power in this world, you know what I mean? Which I think is great. I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with it. If you look at most professional sports, they’re run by Jewish people. If you look at a lot of successful corporations and stuff, more businesses, they’re run by Jewish people. It’s not a knock, but they are some crafty people.”
The response was immediate—from Coyne to the Anti-Defamation League, Richardson was denounced as a bigoted, homophobic, anti-Semite. Richardson quickly issued an apology, whose sincerity was tainted by his insistence that the second heckler was drunk. A few days later (March 28), Jim Coyne suspended Richardson for the remainder of the championship series, as well as prohibited him from watching the team both practice and play.
Richardson was aghast. He pointed out that his ex-wife was Jewish, that his two children from that marriage were being raised Jewish, and that his Jewish lawyer laughed at any suggestion that Sugar Ray was anti-Semitic. Richardson said that since all of his children had white mothers, he could more justly be charged with being antiblack.
A host of noteworthy writers were quick to come to Richardson’s defense.
Christopher Isenberg, a Jewish writer who had profiled Sugar Ray for the Village Voice, posted a blog titled “Jews for Micheal Ray,” saying, “Micheal Ray is proud to have a Jewish lawyer because he thinks they are the best lawyers. Certainly it’s a stereotype, but it’s a stereotype rooted in reality. A disproportionate number of the great lawyers in America are Jews. A disproportionate number of the great basketball players in America are black. We have to be very careful around these facts because here the line between fact and ‘stereotype’ can get very blurry, and if you’re not careful, you can get into deep water real quick. Micheal Ray was unwise to have been so indiscreet around reporters, but it wasn’t exactly Elders of Zion territory.”
Also coming to Richardson’s defense was Zev Chafets, the highly respected and influential author of A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists and One Man’s Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance. After dismissing any ill intent in Richardson’s characterization of Jews as “crafty,” Chafets wrote the following in the Los Angeles Times: “What other hurtful things did Richardson supposedly say? That Israel has the best airport security in the world? This is both true and something Israel itself brags about. That Jews are hated and need to protect themselves? That’s the founding premise of the Anti-Defamation League. . . . Richardson, who was a popular player in Israel during his NBA exile years, is guilty of nothing more than free speech. Even if his observations were wrong—which they are not—there’s nothing insulting about them. What is insulting is the notion that you can’t speak honestly about Jews without getting into trouble.”
David Stern was likewise moved to defend Richardson, conceding that Sugar Ray’s remarks about homosexuals were “inappropriate and insensitive” and worthy of a suspension. Yet, said Stern, “I have no doubt that Micheal Ray is not anti-Semitic. I know that he’s not. . . . He may have exercised very poor judgment, but that does not reflect Micheal Ray Richardson’s feelings about Jews.”
Even the Jewish father of Richardson’s most recent ex-wife rallied to his defense. Yet his most vigorous defense came from the Nation of Islam Sportsblog, which claimed that it was acceptable to attack certain facets of black culture, that is, rap music, the “misunderstandings” that black NFL players have suffered at the hands of the law, and the antics of what’s called the “Black KKK.” But being in any way critical of Jews will brand a non-Jew as being a rabid anti-Semite. And, after all, “What IS untrue about what he said???”
The Sportsblog then proposed a solution to Richardson’s situation: “So, Micheal Ray, head to the temple and shake hands with a rabbi. That will show that you love Jews and want to be rehabilitated. But don’t mention that you might be the victim of racism.”
Yet the most definitive and sensible analysis of this latest imbroglio was provided by New York Post basketball columnist Peter Vecsey, who felt that Richardson was “so unsettled, so unsophisticated and so pliable anybody could draw him into saying anything about anything at any time.”
A few short years later, the NBA fined several players for making gay slurs—Kobe Bryant ($100,000 in 2011), Amar’e Stoudemire and Joakim Noah ($50,000 each in 2012), and Roy Hibbert ($75,000 in 2013). But even though all of these NBA gents had much higher public profiles than Richardson did in the CBA, no suspensions were issued.
In 2007 Tim Hardaway, a one-time NBA All-Star, spewed forth some toxic antigay comments to a sportswriter. Since he was no longer associated with the NBA, the only penalty that the league could dispense was to bar Hardaway from participating in the forthcoming All-Star weekend extravaganza. However, at the time, Hardaway was employed by a CBA franchise—the Indiana Alley Cats—as their chief basketball advisor. Within a few days of Hardaway’s slurs, Indiana fired him.
Why did the CBA react so strongly to Richardson and Hardaway when the NBA punished the same transgressions only with fines that look to be so incredibly large but only amount to a mere pittance of the guilty NBAers multimillion-dollar paydays?
Because the CBA was decidedly a relatively obscure minor league forever pursuing the illusion of legitimacy.
Moreover, given that Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the Canadian Football League, the Major League of Soccer, and even a prominent rugby club in Australia had either lightly fined or totally ignored similar remarks by their athletes indicates that gay bashing was not a capital crime.
At the same time, though, Richardson’s opinions of Jews in general and Israel in particular (whether or not they were willfully anti-Semitic) were most likely the primary reasons for Jim Coyne’s strong reaction. That’s because Jews are (and always have been) major factors in both the on- and off-court doings of the basketball universe.
Even though the origin of basketball was 100 percent Christian—invented by Dr. James Naismith at a YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, just before Christmas 1891—the sons of second-generation Jewish immigrants adopted the game as a means of quickly assimilating into the American culture. This was particularly the case in New York City, where half of the country’s Jewish population lived. If the vast spatial demands of baseball and football made these activities unsuitable for the city’s crowded slums, basketball was seen as an acceptable alternative to such disreputable urban entertainments as were available in dance halls, nickelodeons, and amusement parks. At the dawn of the twentieth century, socialist, labor union, YMHA, and Zionist organizations sponsored hundreds of Jewish teams in dozens of Jewish leagues, all aimed at keeping immigrant youths off the streets and out of trouble. The scarcity of large basketball courts in New York put a premium on passing and cutting, leading this idiosyncratic style of play to be called “Jew Ball.” Within a decade of Naismith’s invention, the slums of New York (and to some degree Philadelphia) became celebrated as “the centers of the basketball universe.”
The league that later became the NBA (in 1949 when it merged with the National Basketball League) began operations as the Basketball Association of America in the fall of 1946. The BAA’s first president was Maurice Podoloff, whose immigrant parents spoke only Yiddish. Except for Eddie “The Mogul” Gottlieb, Podoloff and all of the other franchise owners had hockey backgrounds and were unfamiliar with basketball. But Gottlieb’s decade’s long experience with the famous SPHAs made him the sole source of the theories and practices of basketball in the BAA’s board of governors.
Since there was no college draft prior to that initial 1946–47 season, the eleven charter teams were free to sign any players who had graduated, been expelled from, or never attended college. Three distinct patterns emerged: Signing veteran players who had played in any of the extant pro leagues—the National Basketball League, the American Basketball League, the Eastern Professional Basketball League, plus a host of others that were soon to be defunct. Signing as many nationally known college All-Americans as possible. Or focus on signing guys who were born, raised, or played in the vicinity of any given franchise.
The New York Knickerbockers settled on the last option, stocking their roster with players familiar to the prospective local fans—mostly players from CCNY, LIU, and NYU. No surprise, then, that Sonny Hertzberg, Stan Stutz, Oscar “Ossie” Schectman, Leo Gottlieb, Ralph Kaplowitz, Nat Miltzok, Jake Weber, and Hank Rosenstein were all Jews. So it was that a New York Jew from CCNY made history.
The first game in NBA history was played on November 1, 1946, with the home-standing Toronto Huskies downing the New York Knickerbockers, 68–66. And the first basket was scored by New York’s sturdy point guard, “Ossie” Schectman.
Despite Schectman’s milestone bucket, the Knicks playing to full houses and having a (barely) winning record, the preponderance of Jews on the team (including four of the five starters) eventually created a problem.
That’s because the owner of both the Knicks and Madison Square Garden was Ned Irish. Even worse, the coach was Neil Cohalan, a hoops hero at Manhattan College (which was actually situated in the Bronx) and a notorious alcoholic. Cohalan’s job was to keep the power seat warm for one season until Joe Lapchick’s contract with St. John’s would lapse. Yet as the season unfolded, Cohalan became convinced not only that were his Jewish players too cliquish but that the virulent anti-Semitism the Knicks faced on the road intimidated them to the point where their performances suffered.
On a January trip to Pittsburgh, the fans greeted the visitor’s appearance on the court by singing their own version of a popular song: “East Side, West Side, here come the Jews from New York.” In other cities, when the Knicks had the ball, the fans took to shouting, “Abe! Pass the ball to Abe!”
After Schectman suffered a season-ending injury, Cohalan and Irish quickly traded away five of the remaining Jews. The most impactful of these deals involved Ralph Kaplowitz, who proved to be the necessary catalyst that propelled Gottlieb’s Philadelphia Warriors to the league’s first-ever championship.
There was a more blatant example of anti-Semitism in that inaugural season.
From the get-go the Pittsburgh Ironmen was a dysfunctional team. Coach Paul Birch’s game plan included screaming at his players, kicking water coolers, and being ferociously unhappy with every missed shot, botched pass, defensive lapse, and not only every loss but often with what he believed to be sloppy victories. Yet for some reason that Moe Becker couldn’t quite figure out, Birch always seemed to single out Becker for the most virulent abuse. No matter how many points Becker scored, assist passes he made, rebounds he grabbed, or defensive stops he accomplished, Birch always found grounds for criticism. Becker became increasingly resentful, but because he was only a marginal player, he felt that keeping his mouth closed was necessary to keeping his job.
The touchy situation finally came to a violent boil on November 30, 1946, when the Ironmen were playing the home-standing Washington Capitals. The game was extremely physical with a total of forty personal fouls being called.
Here’s Becker’s version of what happened: “Irv Torgoff was with the Caps, and he was having a field day. Nobody could guard him, including me. Birch was always riding opposing players, and several times he yelled at called Torgoff, calling him a ‘kike.’ I resented this and I cursed at Birch from my seat on the bench.”
Birch kept after Torgoff, who responded with a few choice words of his own. Their argument escalated until they swapped a few punches in the waning moments of the game. The refs quickly banished both of them.
“Birch was already there when the players came into the dressing room after the game,” Becker said. “I was so mad that I was ready to attack him, but two of my teammates grabbed me, lifted me up, and put me in the shower to cool off. When I came out, Stan Noszka started to tell me that Birch didn’t mean what he’d said to Torgoff as an anti-Semitic remark. By then, I was totally crazy. I thought that Noszka was siding with Birch, so I squared off against him. The other guys pleaded with Birch to break us up, and not let us start throwing punches. Birch just sat back and said, ‘Let the Jew take care of himself.’”
Red Auerbach was the coach of the Capitals, and he later buttonholed Becker in the hallway. “I was so mad,” said Becker, “that I was crying. Red told me that if Birch released me, he’d find a spot on his roster for me.” Which is precisely what happened. No surprise that Becker was a better player for a Jewish coach than he was for Birch.
In the succeeding generations, the NBA showcased several outstanding Jews: Hall of Famers Dolph Schayes, Red Auerbach (who among his other noteworthy achievements, singlehandedly integrated blacks into the NBA), Larry Brown (the only coach in history to win championships in both the NCAA and the NBA), and Red Holzman (a veteran of the settlement houses who revived Jew Ball and coached the Knicks to a pair of NBA championships).
Also several Jews of ill repute: A Jewish referee, Nate Messenger, was universally believed to have been consorting with gamblers to insure Philadelphia’s title in 1946. During the 1954 season, another Jewish referee—Leo Hirsh—was banned from the NBA when definitive proof was discovered that he was fixing games in league with gamblers.
In 1954 Jack Molinas was booted from the NBA for gambling on games. In partnership with the Mafia, Molinas went on to be a key figure in arranging fixed games for the next several seasons. He was eventually assassinated by the Mafia.
Despite this often unsavory history, anti-Semitism was virtually unknown during Micheal Ray Richardson’s NBA career. That’s because David Stern and Adam Silver (his deputy commissioner and eventual successor) were Jewish. As were some franchise owners, for example, the controversial Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), the stentorian Jerry Reinsdorf (Chicago Bulls), the volatile Mickey Arison (Miami Heat), the unassuming Lawrence Tanenbaum (Toronto Raptors), the stubborn Herbert Kohl (Milwaukee Bucks), as well as Melvin and Herbert Simon (Indiana Pacers).
According to Nathaniel Friedman, the reason is that “Jews love basketball. If you asked a Jewish millionaire what they really want, he’d probably say they want to buy the New York Knicks. I’ll bet they even dream about doing this. . . . Owning a team is a confluence of two Jewish traditions—love of basketball and being good at business.”
Additionally, during Richardson’s nine-year NBA career, he only played against three Jews—Joel Kramer, Dan Schayes, and Ernie Grunfeld.
Why the drastic reduction of Jewish pros since the BAA’s inaugural season?
The admission of blacks into the league (in 1954) and the fact that upwardly mobile young Jewish athletes no longer had a desperate need to assimilate or escape a ghetto by playing basketball. Playing tennis and/or golf was more fitting for these youngsters.
Ah, but anti-Semitism, like racism, is permanently embedded in many aspects of American culture. And if Bill Russell experienced blatant acts of racism while playing for the Celtics, Boston was also a bastion of anti-Semitism. For sure, the Celtic faithful adored Red Auerbach but only because of his record-breaking successes as the team’s coach and president. Irv Levin, however, who was a co-owner of the Celtics from 1975 to 1978, was never a fan favorite. According to Levin’s son, Lon, there were many fans who did not like the idea of a Jew owning their team. They showed their displeasure by booing Levin every time he showed his face in the Boston Garden.
Rather than being an unpleasant vestige of the past, there are still traces of anti-Semitism alive and unwell in the NBA.
For example, just before the NBA’s 2012 draft, here’s what an anonymous scout’s private opinion concerning the prospects of a professional career for the University of Pennsylvania’s Zack Rosen: “I just don’t see it. I can’t get past the red hair and the Jewishness.”
Still, Jim Coyne had another overriding reason to react so strongly to Richardson’s rather mild comments: The NBA Development League (NBADL) had, since its inception in 2001, rendered the CBA even more fragile and marginal than ever. Yet Coyne and the other CBA bigwigs were still catering to the NBA, just in case the ever-expanding NBADL would be looking for any operation-ready franchises.
In any event, Richardson had apologized to the hecklers immediately after the game and offered another blanket apology to anyone else who might have been offended by his other remarks. “I am not anti-Semitic,” he said. “I was giving compliments. It’s like saying the NBA is 85 percent black.”
After suspending Richardson, the Patroons were quick to issue a public apology. Ben Fernandez, the owner of the franchise and the chairman of the CBA’s board of directors, righteously affirmed that the league would not tolerate bigots.
Then, a mere five days after Richardson’s suspension, Jim Coyne announced that Micheal Ray’s contract with the Patroons would not be renewed. In addition, he would not be allowed to coach Albany’s entrée in the upcoming U.S. Basketball League summer season. In so doing, Coyne also claimed that Richardson’s alleged anti-Semitic comments were not the only reason for his dismissal. Coyne stated that “prior to all this hoopla,” he and Fernandez had discovered that, even though Richardson was under contract to the Patroons, he “had been negotiating with other teams. We pretty much agreed early on he wouldn’t be coming back to the CBA.”
Richardson’s response was to hire a lawyer, John Aretakis, who said that the Patroons actions had put his client’s entire coaching career in jeopardy. “Now he would be labeled for the rest of his life as being anti-Semitic, and he’s not,” said Aretakis. “He’s got two kids who are being raised Jewish. He’s got an ex-wife he has a good relationship with who is Jewish.”
Aretakis was planning to file a law suit against the Hearst Corporation and Times-Union sportswriter Brian Ettkin, claiming defamation and slander. In addition to refuting the anti-Semitic accusations, Aretakis said that Richardson’s epithet to the hecklers, while a poor choice of words, was commonly used by many men who, like his client, were not homophobic.
The newspaper’s managing editor, Mary Fran Gleason, declined to comment.