A Game-Saving Move by the NBA

In the end, the substance he abused the most was Micheal Ray Richardson.

He did this to himself. No one did it to him. The National Basketball Assn. did not make an example of Micheal Ray Richardson by banning him for at least two years. Micheal Ray made an example of Micheal Ray.

But just the same, hooray for the NBA.

Score one for basketball. Somebody finally tossed a star out of the game. Somebody finally had the courage to say: “Enough.”

When word came Tuesday that the NBA, exasperated with Richardson’s sleepy, sneezy and dopey habits, had exiled the excellent guard of the New Jersey Nets forever, feeling sympathy for him was tough. He had had warnings. Everybody had had warnings.

And the public was tired of gentle scoldings, tired of light suspensions and slaps on the wrist. The ludicrous practice of punishing millionaires with thousand-dollar fines had proven useless in soothing basketball’s patrons or in discouraging the culprits. People were tired of watching players disappear and re-materialize like Topper.

It was time to make somebody’s income disappear.

So, Micheal Ray Richardson, a pretty nice fellow, a major talent, at last pushed the lords of basketball too far. His continued absences from games and practices had been forgotten and forgiven. He was like a habitually truant schoolboy who, threatened with expulsion, apologized and winked and got off with cleaning erasers.

This time, though, they put his file in the OUT box. Go, the NBA said, and never again darken our floor.

There have been second and third chances for Richardson, John Lucas, John Drew, Quintin Dailey and others. Baseball and football also had troubled athletes, but professional basketball dispensed the largest average paychecks of any American game and needed steady ticket sales and network TV’s increasing interest to make ends meet.

New headliners such as Patrick Ewing, Akeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan, and novelty acts such as tall Manute Bol, fat Charles Barkley, and small Spud Webb, had done wonders for the league’s popularity.

Only coke kept the fans from smiling.

Drastic action was called for, and the NBA put its population on notice by telling John Drew that he could not play with the big guys anymore, although he hadn’t been playing this season, anyway. They tried to make it clear that since they would tolerate no more drug-related misbehavin’, they were prepared to give somebody the Papillon treatment, kicking him out of the world.

Well, it finally happened. Mr. M.R. Richardson will have to make a living some other way now, for the next couple of years, for sure, and maybe for the rest of his life. If he wants to buy drugs in the future, he may have to sell them to afford it. And if he does that, somebody really might kick him out of the world.

The NBA is not really sending this man to Devil’s Island. Nobody is telling Richardson his life is over. On the contrary, he is getting a chance to get his life in order. He can work, walk free, return to school, whatever he wants. He can buy his way into any basketball game in the world, sit down and watch it. He can even apply for reinstatement in a couple of years, although there is nothing automatic about reinstatement.

He just can’t shoot jumpers over Dennis Johnson or guard Magic Johnson. Not unless he does it in somebody’s driveway.

Good riddance to Micheal Ray? Oh, those words are rather cruel. Most of the damage he did was to himself. He did not stick up any banks--and, Lord be with him--he never will. There is no reason to believe that Richardson cannot become what society sometimes refers to as a solid citizen.

No one wants his life’s work taken away. But this is not like amputating a sculptor’s hands. Micheal Ray Richardson had choice in this matter. He had clear understanding of the risks involved and found himself unable to accept whatever privileges he had. He asked for what he got.

There was an innocence about him that makes his story more sad than it already is. Richardson came to pro basketball straight from the University of Montana, and his first stop was Madison Square Garden.

“Man, New York is crazy,” he said in an interview during his rookie year. “I pay more for a sandwich in New York than I did in Montana for my apartment.”

As a player, he was a sight to behold. He had hands like a gunslinger. Few players in the recent history of basketball had hands so fast, with reflexes to match. When he was playing regularly, Richardson always ranked among the league leaders in steals.

Now, he ranks nowhere. Don’t search any more box scores for his name. Pretend a doctor has pronounced him unfit to play. He is not sidelined and he is not benched.

He is gone.

Someone, somewhere, will say that the NBA went too far. Richardson might even ask an attorney to try to prove as much.

But, legal matters aside, what the bosses of professional basketball did was damn near heroic. While others talked, they acted. They did something. They served notice. For today, at least, the NBA is in a league by itself.