Charley Rosen - Sugar: Micheal Ray Richardson, Eighties Excess, and the NBA

There were several reasons why the mood at the New Jersey Nets annual post-Christmas party was unabashedly celebratory. After all, werent the Nets riding high with a record of 23-14? Wasnt their roster loaded with such potent young talent as Mike Gminski, Buck Williams, Darryl Dawkins, Albert King, and especially the dazzling Micheal Ray Richardson? And hadnt they demonstrated their kinetic potential just eighteen months ago when they had upset the defending champion Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs? No wonder the owner of the team, Joe Taub, was brimming with optimism.

Jersey Joe was born in Paterson, where his father, an immigrant from Poland, eked out enough money to support the family by driving a horse-drawn cart though the streets of the city buying and selling junk.

Taub played basketball at Eastside High School and became a devotee of the sport. He developed another lifelong passion while a student at Temple Universityan interest in entrepreneurial promotions. Thats where he and a fellow classmate, Bill Cosby, booked acts for a school show titled The Hour of Pleasure. One act booked for $50.00 by Taub and Cosby was a virtually unknown folk-rock group called the Mamas and the Papas. The band was paid $35.00 and Taub and Cosby each earned $7.50. Numbers meant money, so after graduating from Temple, Taub found employment as an accountant.

At age twenty-one, Joe and his older brother Henry founded a business that soon became Automatic Data Processing, a firm that printed checks for large industries. By 1985 Taubs company employed a work force of thirty thousand and grossed $3.5 billion annually. In addition to his many local philanthropic avocations, Taub had headed a syndicate that purchased the Long Islandbased Nets in 1978 and moved them to Piscataway, New Jersey.

He was a short, trim septuagenarian who, in his tailored pin-striped, double-breasted suits, with his sharp grey eyes, and his heart-shaped head topped by a coiffed helmet of thick gray hair, could easily pass for a fifty-year-old still lingering in the prime of life.

And if Taub saw himself as father figure and patron to all of his players, he had a special fondness for Richardson. Thats because, since Richardson had already failed two official drug tests, the exuberantly immature Richardson needed more supportive attention than the rest. And Taub wholeheartedly believed his best players vows that he had quit drugs and would stay clean forever more. After all, who was two-faced enough to lie to Jersey Joe?

And, hey, twas the season to be jolly.

So Taub had gone to considerable expense to make sure that all of the Nets employees would have a bang-up time in a private, windowless, mirror-walled room in Georges Restaurant in Moonachie, New Jersey, just a short drive from the Nets practice court. Indeed, hed sprung for $7,000 for the top-of-the-line Grand Buffetfeaturing everything from filet mignon to seafood paella, from chicken piccata to baked Virginia ham. All available at carving stations or served from real silver chafing dishes. There was also an open bar and waiters in tuxedos circulating through the one hundred or so guests bearing trays of bite-sized shrimp and chicken goodies. A hip DJ cost Taub another $250.

Dozens of tables were arranged around the fringes of the dance floor, each table covered with a white linen tablecloth that matched the napkins, also with fancy translucent china, crystal glassware, gleaming utensils, flowers, candles, the works. However, very few of those on hand bothered to sit at the tables, preferring instead to dance on the brown-and-tan marbleized floor as the DJ played the hits of the day: Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, and even the Talking Heads. As a concession to the brothers, the room also rocked with disco tunes, and Kool & the Gang was still cool enough.

By far the happiest of the Nets players was Micheal Sugar Ray Richardson, and his joy was understandable: At age thirty, he was in the second season of a four-year $3 million contract. His wife had just given birth to a baby boy, and Richardson had rewarded her with a brand-new, silver-hued Mercedes-Benz convertible. (His was gold colored.) Even better he was already a four-time All-Star and was playing like a guaranteed future Hall of Famer. Only a few weeks ago, Larry Bird had said this about Sugar Ray: Hes the best basketball player on the planet.

For sure, Micheals not-so-distant past was a haze of habitual drug and alcohol abuse. He had previously tested positive twice for cocaine and on several occasions had been forced to spend time in rehab centers. But he was convinced that he had learned his lesson, that he was cured. And hadnt he been certified clean for just over two years? The NBA had even recruited Richardson to appear in Cocaine Drain, a widely disseminated antidrug video. Cleaner than Mister Clean, he says of that time. And playing the best basketball of my career.

Besides, at the behest of Taub, Richardsons best buddy and teammate was on hand to look out for him. That would be Darryl Dawkins, aka Chocolate Thunder, all six feet eleven, 270 pounds of himfamous for tearing down rims and joyfully claiming he was from the planet Lovetron. However, even though hed been in the NBA for eight years, Dawkins remained a man-child and underachieving player. Off the court, Dawkins was the team jester and party-time ring leader. Always ready for a good time, he devoured the bountiful feast of his life with two hungry hands. Most importantly, Big Double-D was no stranger to illicit drug use; had seen, heard, and used everything; and always knew what was what.