EXCLUSIVE: Excerpt From Knicks Star's Upcoming Book

Former New York Knicks star Michael Ray Richardson is offering a reflection on his basketball career and battle against addiction in his upcoming memoir.

Geoff Magliocchetti | Sep 24, 2024

Nov 19, 1985; Portland, OR, USA: FILE PHOTO; New Jersey Nets guard Michael Ray Richardson (20) battles for a loose ball against Portland Trailblazers guard Darnell Valentine (left) at Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Imagn Images / Imagn Images

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New York Knicks

Former New York Knicks star Michael Ray Richardson is taking his story from the hardwood to the page: alongside Seattle-based author Jake Uitti, Richardson has penned the upcoming memoir "Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption."

Richardson starred for the Knicks and New Jersey Nets before he was banned from the NBA for numerous violations of the league's substance abuse policies. Though he was reinstated two years later, Richardson extended his career overseas and he later served as a head coach of several semi-professional squads.

Now, he's detailing it all in "Banned," which is due out in stores on Nov. 26. Forewords have been penned by Basketball Hall-of-Famers George Gervin and Nancy Lieberman.

Pre-order the book on Amazon here.

"In "Banned," Richardson opens up about his life both on and off the basketball court, discussing all the highs and lows that made him both a hero and a villain," a summary from Skyhorse Publishing reads. "Now back in the States and running youth basketball clinics, "Banned" is Richardson’s first opportunity to open up about his life, showing that though you may get knocked down—even from self-inflicted actions—the only person that can count you out is yourself."

In anticipation of the book's release, Knicks on SI is proud to share a chapter from the upcoming account, shared exclusively by Skyhorse. In this chapter, Richardson describes his 1982 trade from the Knicks to the Golden State Warriors and his clashes with then-Knicks head coach Hubie Brown.

(Special thanks to Uitti and Rachel Marble for making this possible)

Chapter 9: DECEPTION EVERYWHERE

Hubie Brown was the only coach I truly never got along with. Sure, throughout my career, other coaches and I had our spats. That’s normal. Professionals butt heads sometimes. But Hubie and I never got on the same page. I tried, but he was disrespectful to players and to me, especially. He talked to us like children. I remember reading something about him saying he was naïve at his past stop as the coach in Atlanta (from 1976–81). Prior to that, he was with the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA (as an assistant) and the Kentucky Colonels in the ABA (where he’d won a championship). His team had been full of drug users, and he just hadn’t known what to look for. Now, as he came to New York, he was set to exert control.

Before the season started in 1982–83, the team held two-a-day training camp in South Jersey. Even with camp just beginning, Hubie and I already weren’t getting along. I had respect for Red Holzman. He made me wait my turn as a rookie, and that was hard, but I respected him as a head coach and as a man. He may have been stuck in his ways at times, but he knew the game. And he treated us like adults. Hubie treated his players like kids. With Atlanta, when he called a timeout, his players didn’t go to the bench to sit down. Instead, Hubie brought them to the free-throw line on the court to degrade and cuss at them. That way the fans couldn’t hear him scream obscenities.

I understand Hubie is a beloved figure today. He’s a fine announcer, now in his nineties. But if Hubie did today what he tried back then, he would get a rude awakening. Guys wouldn’t go for it. Back then, though, we had no choice. Players didn’t have the power—the coaches did. We just didn’t see eye to eye. He tried to use a heavy hand, and I wasn’t for it. All of this culminated during a team meeting during training camp. That’s when Hubie went around the room, talking shit to people. He called Bill Cartwright “Miss Bill,” he told Campy Russell he was overrated, and then he came around to me. “Sugar,” he said. “Every team has an asshole. And on this one, it’s you.”

He was about to lay into someone else when I raised my hand. I looked at our new coach in the eye and told him, “N-no, c-coach. On this team, there are t-two assholes. Y-you and m-me.” If there was a DJ in the room, the record would have scratched. The gym got quiet. But Hubie wasn’t a big man then, he just talked shit because he thought we couldn’t talk back. But I did. I didn’t give a fuck. Who was he? I was a three-time All-Star, the team’s clear-cut best player. I played both ends and knew how and where to get my teammates the ball. But did Hubie care? Nope. He traded my ass the first fucking chance he got.

But while I was angry with Hubie, I don’t hold it against him today. He did what he felt he had to do. Did he give me a chance? No. But at the time, I wasn’t giving myself a chance, either. All I had time for was keeping up the lie of an NBA life and the reality of addiction. After training camp, I just left to get high. It was mostly what I thought about. Binging and then women. I’d hole up in a hotel and have ladies come in and out with food and more. I shake my head thinking about it now. It was a fantasy that quickly became a nightmare. I was no longer the next Walt Frazier. I was becoming the next famous burnout.

***

After that heated exchange, we had a preseason game in Landover, Maryland, against the Bullets. But even though he was trading me, did Hubie let me know? Nope. Instead, he let my ass get up at 6 a.m. that morning and get on the plane and fly down to DC with the team. From the plane, I got on the team bus. When we pulled into the hotel; I was the second-to-last person to get off the bus. That’s when a Knicks official stopped me and pulled me aside. “You were just traded,” he said. “You can go back to New York now.” Huh? I was livid. But all I could do was get into a cab and go back to the airport.

Hubie, whose teams always played slow like snails, showed me who he really was with that one. Later, in an interview with some news crew not long after, Hubie bashed me. “Stop telling me about all this incredible talent,” he said of me. He said that because of my “demons,” I never lived up to my potential in a Knickerbocker uniform. That made me want to break a two-by-four over his head, but I had to swallow it. My mind moved on, as that of an addict quickly does. My next move was to call my agent. That’s when a horrible idea got into my head. Probably the biggest mistake I ever made.

The Knicks had dealt me to the Warriors on October 22, 1982—a week before the season started!—in a sign-and-trade, officially. The deal was me and a fifth-round pick for Bernard King, a prolific scorer who the Knicks badly wanted. But my agent, Patrick Healy, advised me not to go to Golden State. Instead, he recommended that I hold out and demand more money. It was the worst thought I could have considered. But really, I was just angry. I’d poured my heart into the Knicks. I loved the team and the city. And here comes Hubie, and then I’m gone? I was mad at the entire league. And all I wanted to do was chill and smoke in a dark room. So I listened to my agent and held out.

"Considering these words today makes me shudder. Without anything to do for a few weeks, I turned to drugs more and more. I was living in Chelsea with my dealer one floor above me, so I didn’t even have to leave the building to get high. I had no business doing what I was doing, but that didn’t stop me. Truth be told, I was acting like a child. Hubie had tried to make me feel like one, and now I was playing the part voluntarily. I pretended my holdout was to squeeze more money from the Warriors. But really, I was just pouting. If Hubie hadn’t been such a control freak, I told myself as I smoked bowl after bowl, I could be on the fast break right now setting up an alley-oop."

But it wasn’t his fault that I was digging myself a deep grave. It was all mine. In the end, it was all born out of boredom. As Hubie even said, it was my “demons.” As my agent worked to get more money, I relaxed. Looking back, I should have just reported to Golden State, played out the year, and kept it moving forward. But I couldn’t accept that I had to leave the Knicks because of our coach. As the saying goes, idle time is the devil’s mind. And for a few weeks, I had a lot of idle time. I was supposed to go to Golden State within seventy-two hours of the trade, but it took me weeks.

Thanks to my agent’s advice, which he suggested because he wanted more money, I protested. I spent my idle time between the Big Apple and the aptly named Mile High City. While I was back home in Denver, Warriors coach Al Attles, who just recently passed away, came to visit me to try and convince me to come to Golden State. I wanted him to welcome me onto the team, but he wasn’t a warm and fuzzy guy. I think I was lonely more than anything. Hurt by people I thought I could trust. From Jud to Willis to Red to Muhammad.

In early November, my agent and the Warriors were able to come to an agreement. It took a few weeks, which felt like months. By then, my dipping and dabbing had turned worse. And I’d already missed the team’s first five games. But what made me feel a little better was that the Knicks had started the season 0–7. The ironic thing about me and Bernard getting traded for one another was that he also had a substance abuse problem. Playing for the Utah Jazz, King was arrested and suspended for using cocaine. (Later, he faced even worse legal issues.) That same year, in 1980, Jazz player Terry Furlow died in a car crash with coke in his system.

***

In my first game with Golden State, when I was finally back on the court doing what I loved. Coming off the bench on November 9, I played 16 minutes and scored eight points with two assists and four rebounds. But things took an unexpected turn, as I sprained my ankle in the game. It was probably the result of dehydration or whatever other side effects from smoking so much. I’d been so durable in my career, but taking the time away from the game, holding out, and getting high, I wasn’t in game shape. I tried to play on it, but I missed several games early on.

How did I get here? This was the first time I was unsure of my basketball future. Coach Attles had promised me a fresh start. But I came off the bench for the first four games with the team, missing several in between due to my ankle. In my fourth, I played 32 minutes, and Attles, one of three NBA Black head coaches back then—along with Paul Silas and Lenny Wilkens— saw what I could do in extended playing time when I tallied 15 points, five assists, three steals, and seven rebounds. So he put me in the starting lineup after that in place of Lorenzo Romar. My ankle still wasn’t healthy, but I gutted it out. I had to.

We had a solid starting five. It was me, Larry Smith, Joe Barry Carroll, World B. Free, and Purvis Short. We could all score. And World and Joe were All-Stars. But the team wasn’t playing well. We started 5–12 and couldn’t find any rhythm the entire season. Truth be told, I was out of it. This was the lowest point in my life, and I don’t remember much of those first few months. Then, in January, I hurt my left ankle again. With that, I hit one of the worst stretches of my life. More and more, my existence became about smoking. I told myself I was just passing the time, but I was losing control. I missed the next 10 days with the team.

When I first got to Oakland, I was living in a Holiday Inn. Smoking, getting high almost every day—especially while I was injured. I dove into the famous Bay Area nightlife, too. So much so that the Warriors even hired private detectives to follow me. I think some part of me thought that if I got high enough then the bad dream of being in California would go away and I’d wake up back in Denver or in New York with a brighter future ahead of me. It was classic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-escapism. Golden State hoped I would be the point guard they needed, but the whole thing was cursed. The team just couldn’t win more than a game or two in a row. For the season, I couldn’t bring my A-game because I was tiring myself with drugs.

After practices, I would leave the arena with screeching tires. I went into neighborhoods in the city that I definitely should not have been going to. And detectives followed me. I had a sense they were tracking me, but for some reason, I wasn’t worried. Game days, I would be hyper. I would yell at my teammates and coaches. Coach Attles called me a “nightmare.” As former All-Star World B. Free said, a person would have to be sleeping under a rock not to see what I was up to. Even Sports Illustrated reported I’d flown back east to settle some drug debts. But I wasn’t the only one in the league like this. Some of the best and brightest were right there with me.

***

There was only one time when I was sure I was being followed. I was still playing for Golden State at the time, and I was driving around with a couple of my friends, Ron Brewer and Lewis Lloyd. But I wasn’t getting high that particular day. Thank God. The three of us had just left practice and I’d stopped by my house on the way to taking Ron home. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw a car following us. The kind where when I switched lanes, he switched lanes, too. When I turned, he turned with me. It was something out of a movie. I kept watching him in my mirror as I drove.

After I dropped Ron off at his place, I turned around to drive back home. I got only a block and a half when I stopped at a light. I’ll always remember this moment: I turned to Lewis and said, “I think there’s someone following us, and I don’t know who it is.” When we came to a pharmacy parking lot, I turned into it. That’s when the tail pulled in behind me. But by the time he’d gotten into the parking lot, I was able to do a quick U-turn and the guy got spooked. He must have realized I was onto him because he did a U-turn, too, but just sped off.

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Published Sep 24, 2024

GEOFF MAGLIOCCHETTI

Editor-In-Chief at All Knicks