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Overview
One player who personified the eighties excess is Micheal Ray Richardson. During his eight-year career in the NBA (1978–86), he was a four-time All-Star, twice named to the All-Defense team, and the first player to lead the league in both assists and steals. He was also a heavy cocaine user who went on days-long binges but continued to be signed by teams that hoped he’d get straight. Eventually he was the first and only player to be permanently disqualified from the NBA for repeat drug use.
Tracking the rise, fall, and eventual redemption of Richardson throughout his playing days and subsequent coaching career, Charley Rosen describes the life‑defining pitfalls Richardson and other players faced and considers key themes such as off‑court and on‑court racism, anti-Semitism, womanizing, allegations of point‑shaving within the league, and drug and alcohol abuse by star players.
By constructing his various lines of narration around the polarizing figure of Richardson—equal parts basketball savant, drug addict, and pariah—Rosen illuminates some of the more unseemly aspects of the NBA during this period, going behind the scenes to provide an account of what the league’s darker side was like during its celebrated golden age.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496206121 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 581 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Living on Dreams
Richardson was born in Lubbock, Texas, on April 11, 1955. "My father was Billy Jack Richardson," says Micheal Ray, "and since he was in the army, throughout those early days he would come and go. When I was six, he was gone for good. That's when Luddie, my mom, decided to get us all out of Lubbock — a nowhere place that was all dirt roads and hot as hell." The family (two older brothers and three younger sisters) wound up in Denver. "'To get us a better life,' she told us."
Micheal says he was Luddie's favorite, and that she was "the sweetheart" of his life. "'I'm the mother and the daddy, too,' she used to say, and she was. She worked in the kitchen at Colorado General Hospital and was on her feet all day. When she came home I'd rub skin lotion into her sore feet. 'Don't worry, Momma,' I'd tell her. 'Someday I'm gonna have lots of money. I'll buy you a house and then your feet won't hurt anymore.'"
Richardson never blamed anybody for his subsequent misdeeds. "When you willfully do something," he has said, "no matter what it is, you have to take full responsibility. That's why, even with all I've been through, I've always taken 100 percent of the responsibility." Even so, there were several unfortunate circumstances of his childhood that greatly influenced the negative decisions Richardson made as an adult.
There's an enormous body of literature proving that African American boys raised by single mothers have difficult lives ahead of them. Indeed, 72 percent of black males in America are raised by single mothers — as opposed to 25.8 percent of the total population. Furthermore, studies show that single mothers are much stricter with their daughters than they are with their sons. The boys are routinely coddled, and their poor behavior easily excused. As a result, these youngsters are at a higher risk of engaging in drug and alcohol abuse, of being less cooperative with authority figures, having damaging emotional problems, and possessing a weaker sense of right and wrong. Moreover, they have poor impulse control and are incapable of delaying gratification, which usually leads to sexual promiscuity.
The youngsters generally feel betrayed and insulted by their departed father and see themselves as victims of universal injustice. This leads to self-hatred and an inability to deal with either failure or success. Still another result is the development of "father hunger," that is, the desperate search for a male adult to take the place of the missing father.
In a sense, Richardson got off easy only because 72 percent of adolescent murderers are mother-raised black males, as are 43 percent of the national prison population and 60 percent of convicted rapists. Otherwise, Richardson's adult years neatly, and tragically, fit many aspects of this unfortunate scenario. It should be noted, however, that most of these traits were not manifest until he began abusing drugs.
"I also grew up with a serious speech impediment," says Richardson, "a pronounced lisp and stutter. Sometimes it was impossible for anybody to understand what I was trying to say. Because we moved into a black and Spanish section of Denver, the white kids had another reason to tease me and sometimes beat me up. I tried getting back at them by laughing at this guy's big nose, or that guy's bad skin. But what I was supposed to do was shuffle around and act like a darkie, so my making fun of them only brought more abuse my way."
It used to be that a child's stuttering was believed to be caused by an overprotective parent, usually the mother. This view was abandoned in favor of the cause being a matter of a child's language and thought development progressing quicker than the motor abilities for producing speech. While 10 percent of preschool children stutter, 90 percent stop by the age of twelve. However, Richardson would become one of the 1 percent of adult stutterers.
Ross Barrett of the Center for Stuttering says that stuttering is four times more common in young boys than in young girls. "The current research," says Barrett, "also shows that there is no emotional cause for stuttering. In fact, stuttering is a genetically disposed condition that can be located in the twelfth chromosome. However, we don't know why 1 percent of child stutterers continue stuttering as adults. It probably has something to do with brain chemistry."
In any event, Richardson is merely the latest in a long line of adult stutterers: Demosthenes famously put pebbles in his mouth in an attempt to cure himself. Others include Aristotle, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Theodore Roosevelt, Lenin, and Louis the Stammerer, who was the king of France in 877–79.
In any case, while Richardson's stutter initially limited his opportunities to express himself outside the basketball court, once he became a star he lost all his inhibitions and was unafraid to say whatever he thought in any company and in any circumstances.
The first of Richardson's many father figures was Donald Wilson, the principal of his elementary school. "He was the one who encouraged me and helped me to discover that playing basketball was the only way I could truly express myself."
Richardson moved on to all-black Manuel High School and made the varsity as a freshman. "I didn't play much at first, but while most of the kids were running around, smoking reefer, and drinking Mad Dog 20-20, which was the cheapest wine they could get their hands on, I was a good kid and totally focused on basketball." He would even shovel the snow covering a nearby playground basketball court so he could practice his shooting. And he used to dream about playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA): "One night I had to wake up everybody to tell them that I'd just dreamt that I dunked over Julius Erving."
Richardson blossomed in his senior year, and he had an outstanding state tournament, leading his team to the championship game where they lost to an all-white team. "All of a sudden," he says, "I was a hero and the same people who tortured me now wanted to kiss my ass." He even had his choice of girls who were also begging for his attention.
Richardson then accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Montana: "The only one I received." But in truth, it was Micheal Ray himself who initiated the contact.
George Melvin "Jud" Heathcote was Montana's coach, and his recruiting efforts were focused on the point guard on the team that beat Manuel High School to win the state championship. "But," said Heathcote, "the kid had a lot of family problems so he decided to go to a school that was closer to home." As a result, Heathcote was "scrambling" for a guard.
"Out of nowhere," Heathcote said, "I got a phone call from a guy who says, 'Hi, I'm Micheal Ray Richardson.' He told me that he knew the guard I wanted had gone elsewhere, that he was a friend of so-and-so, and he heard that Missoula was a nice place, so he'd like to come up there. So I called my assistant coach, Jim Brandenburg, and asked who the hell Micheal Ray Richardson was. And he said, 'He's a six-three forward from Manuel High School in Denver.' And I said, 'I'm not looking for any six-three forwards.' Brandenburg says, 'Well, maybe he can play guard, I don't know.'"
Because Heathcote's hoops program was chronically underfunded, he was always looking to catch lightning in a bottle. Without making any commitment, Heathcote then invited Richardson to come to Missoula for a visit.
Under the existing NCAA rules, coaches were prohibited from either working out potential recruits or even watching them scrimmage on campus. But Heathcote and Brandenburg stationed themselves near a doorway and snuck a few quick peeks as Richardson played pickup games with some of the holdover varsity players. "My God," said Heathcote to his assistant. "Has he got some quick hands! Let's give him a scholarship."
If Heathcote stretched the rules a wee bit, many of his contemporaries were secretly tearing them to shreds. For example, while no-show jobs and money under the table were common inducements powerhouse programs employed to attract blue-chip recruits, a certain southwestern college routinely sent an assistant coach on recruiting trips with a suitcase filled with at least $20,000 in cash. Even worse, this particular assistant — who had played in the NBA and eventually returned to the league as an assistant — habitually kept half the money for himself.
The primary function of another assistant at a southern school — also an NBA vet — was to make sure that recruits who visited the campus were provided with hookers.
Moreover, the standard recruiting ploy of an assistant at a midwestern college was to bed down the single mothers of the young men he was recruiting.
The list approaches infinity, but the most egregious violation concerned an East Coast college that provided a drug-addicted, yet much sought after, high-school player with heroin.
"Living in Missoula was a shock," Richardson recalls, "especially since I was the only black player on the team. But my momma had taught me to love people for what they were, so I learned to live with them and learned about who they were. My roommate was as country as a cow pie, and so were most of my new teammates. It took me about two months to make the adjustment. Keg parties were the big deal on campus, and that was fine with me. Otherwise I lived like a nerd. And I was so homesick that every other weekend I drove eighteen hundred miles roundtrip to visit my family."
During his freshman season, Richardson grew an outsized Afro and averaged 7.5 points per game. When a girl he was dating became pregnant, Richardson married her in the summer of 1975. The next year he boosted his average to 18.2 points per game, led the Montana Grizzlies to the school's first-ever Big Sky Conference championship, and into the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament — where they reached the regional finals before losing a close game to John Wooden's mighty University of California, Los Angeles Bruins. In recognition of his outstanding play, Richardson was named to the all-conference first team.
"I was very close to Heathcote," says Richardson. "I came to him with all of my troubles, and he was very supportive and helpful in many ways. Anyway, after my sophomore season, Heathcote left to take over at Michigan State where he'd be working with Magic Johnson. I was devastated. 'Don't go!' I pleaded. 'You're like a father to me.' Then I started crying my eyes out. 'Coach, you can't leave me. I don't have a father.' But there was nothing I could do."
Richardson was so dependent on Heathcote that he wanted to transfer to Michigan. "No," said Heathcote. "Your place is here."
When Jim Brandenburg succeeded Heathcote, it didn't take long for Richardson and his new coach to develop a close relationship. "I was so hungry for a father figure," says Richardson, "that almost any man who smiled at me and was nice to me would do."
Over the next two seasons, Richardson's scoring improved to a team-best 19.2 and then 24.2 points per game. In addition, he set the pace in rebounds and assists. Inspired by his own success and the celebrity of boxer "Sugar" Ray Robinson, Richardson also started referring to himself as "Sugar."
Brandenburg has nothing but praise for his star player: "Micheal was always a good kid, a good practice player and a hard worker. If we had featured him more, he could have scored thirty or forty points every game. We knew we couldn't do that because our opponents would triple-team him, and he'd be totally out of the mix."
The Grizzlies had a record of 20-9 in Richardson's last season at Montana, but an overtime loss to Weber State in the second round of the Big Sky tournament kept them out of the NCAA's Big Dance.
No surprise, though, when Richardson was selected to play in a senior all-star game in Hawaii. Leading up to this game, Micheal Ray was projected as being a low first- or high second-round draft pick. "But then I kicked everybody's ass," he says. "Reggie Theus, Phil Ford, Butch Lee — I made them all look like shit. Suddenly everybody was telling me that I would go top five in the upcoming NBA draft."
Away from his wife, his new-born daughter, and the provincial world of Missoula, Richardson took full advantage of his freedom.
Besides NBA coaches, general managers, and scouts, the scene was crawling with agents. "All of the agents used the same inducements; fixing us up with Hawaiian girls. Most of them were ugly bitches, but I was living in a fantasy world so I fucked all comers."
The 1978 NBA college draft was a low-key affair, closed to the public, and dependent upon wire services to report the results. Which were as follows:
1. Portland, Mychal Thompson from Minnesota
2. Kansas City, Phil Ford from North Carolina
3. Indiana, Rick Robey from Kentucky
4. New York, Micheal Ray Richardson, Montana
Most notably, Boston selected Larry Bird sixth, and Philadelphia picked Mo Cheeks in the second round (thirty-sixth overall). San Antonio based its first-round pick (Frankie Sanders from Southern University, twentieth overall) strictly on the information on the back of a Topps bubble gum card.
In any event, the Knicks were thrilled to have secured the rights to Richardson. Knicks coach, Willis Reed, heralded Richardson as the "next Walt Frazier."
CHAPTER 2
Living the Dream
His first pro contract guaranteed $909,000 (worth $3.2 million today) for four years. And he immediately bought a Mercedes-Benz 450SL that featured the word "Sugar" embossed on the stick shift in large gold letters.
Richardson's meet-and-greet press conference in Madison Square Garden was a disaster. "The first question they asked me was why my nickname was 'Sugar.' Well, I was very nervous, and with my stuttering and all, it took me about three or four minutes to answer. 'Because my game's so sweet.' Man, those New York media guys were looking at me like I was a leper, and their reports just ripped me up, down, and sideways."
Once the season started it didn't take long for Richardson to realize, "I simply wasn't ready for the NBA."
In truth, college and pro ball are two vastly different versions of the same thing — like scrambled and hard-boiled eggs. The NBA is faster (up and down the court), quicker (speed in a limited area), and much more physical. Whereas college teams might have five or six different offensive sets, NBA ballclubs usually have anywhere from fifteen to twenty — and the same differential exists in defensive alignments and rotations. As a result, rookies have to make more decisions — and make them quicker — than they did in the college game.
It should be noted, however, that because the draft rules have changed over the years to enable players to turn pro after playing only one year in college, rookies are even more unprepared for the power, speed, and intricacies of NBA action. With so many young, raw players on NBA rosters, coaches have been forced to dumb down their game plans. That's one reason why we see so many high pick and rolls, which is essentially rather uncomplicated two-man basketball. And which is why today's rookies have an easier time adjusting and making an impact.
But in the 1978–79 season, Richardson was lost.
The NBA made little sense. Ray Williams was the Knicks' young, dynamic shooting guard whose ability to sky over big men was powered by his unusually large thighs. In fact Williams's thighs were too muscular to fit comfortably into the tight uniform shorts that NBA teams wore back then. "Girls' shorts!" Richardson huffed. "Hot pants!" In order to avoid the pinching and occasional cramping that resulted, Williams took a pair of scissors and reduced the pressure by cutting two- or three-inch slits on each side of the shorts. And the NBA fined him fifty dollars!
And whereas veteran players could cuss referees with impunity, a raised eyebrow was sufficient to get a rookie nailed with a technical foul. Moreover, established stars like Moses Malone, Bob McAdoo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Artis Gilmore, Elvin Hayes, and Truck Robinson wouldn't get tooted for committing fouls unless the contact drew blood. But if a rookie so much as scratched his own ass ...?
Willis Reed was Richardson's latest coach-cum-father figure and he tried to help: "Willis took me under his wing. I was playing about twenty minutes a game, and I thought I was making slow, but steady progress. But I was still mostly confused."
Too bad Reed lacked the communication skills and the necessary basketball IQ to be an effective NBA head coach. As a player, he was all heart and grit, but when the "old" Knicks of the late '60s and early '70s would convene in a huddle, Red Holzman would often ask the likes of Bill Bradley, Phil Jackson, Jerry Lucas, Dave DeBusschere, and Walt Frazier, "What the hell is going on out there?" And whenever Reed volunteered an opinion, he was told by his teammates to "shut the fuck up."
Even so, Reed believed in Richardson and was always encouraging.
"The team wasn't doing so well," says Micheal Ray, "until we won five games on a tough six-game road trip to the West Coast. Don't you know that the team's owner, Sonny Werblin, met us when we landed in New York at midnight and fired Willis on the spot. Damn!"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Sugar"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Charley Rosen.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface,
Prologue: December 27, 1985 — Moonachie, New Jersey,
1. Living on Dreams,
2. Living the Dream,
3. Big Man in the Big Apple,
4. To Fix or Not to Fix, That Was the Question,
5. Moving from Coast to Coast to Coast,
6. Playing It Straight ... for a While,
7. Life after Death,
8. The Great Migration in Black and White,
9. Back in the USA,
10. The View from the Bench,
11. Sunk Once More,
12. The Wild, Wild West,
13. The Most Shameful Playoff Series in the History of Professional Basketball,
Epilogue: Whither Sugar Ray?,
A Note on Sources,