Bittersweet

"I don't want any more part of basketball."

Three weeks before the start of the 1983-84 NBA season, Micheal (Sugar) Ray Richardson uttered those words after having quietly left the New Jersey Nets ' training camp, found some cocaine and disappeared into a hotel room, seeking to escape from reality. Though he had been an All-Star three times, he was practically broke, the result of having gone through six agents, 16 cars and untold quantities of cocaine during his five-year pro career. His wife of eight years was pressing for a divorce settlement that would include custody of their only child. His third agent was suing him for $606,000. His addiction to cocaine was worsening, and the Nets would soon cancel the two years remaining on his contract. At 28, Richardson appeared to be finished as a basketball player—and he didn't seem to care. "The life-style that basketball has created for me, I can't handle that," he told a friend, Charles Grantham , executive vice-president of the NBA Players Association . "Maybe I'd be better off driving a truck."

"I'm playing better than any guard in the league. No brag, just statin' the truth."

So said Richardson recently, and with justification. From Dec. 25 to 29 he had led the injury-troubled Nets to four victories in four games, averaging 28.7 points, 6.7 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 3.5 steals a game. He had made 22 of 23 free throws, scored a career-high 36 points against the New York Knicks and hit three three-pointers in as many attempts against Detroit , prompting Piston coach Chuck Daly to say, "If there's a better player on this planet, I want to see him."

Four days after being named NBA Player of the Week for his holiday heroics, Richardson scored 26 points, had 12 assists and grabbed 11 rebounds in a game against Phoenix , to complete what is believed to be the only "triple double" in Nets history. "It couldn't have been done by a better person," Richardson said, smiling. Had Nets coach Stan AI-beck ever expected him to make such a remarkable comeback? "No, I really didn't—and I'm sure Micheal feels the same way," Albeck said. "When he was down in the dirt, it looked like there was no possible way for him to get out of it. You've got to give him credit."

Richardson's is one of the most dramatic comeback stories in sports. Yet there is a hint of sadness in Grantham 's voice as he discusses Richardson's roller-coaster career. "There are a lot of questions that must be answered," Grantham says. "For example, whose responsibility was it to educate this kid in so many areas?" Unfortunately, says Grantham , who has emerged as the stabilizing force in Richardson's basketball career, similar questions are often heard in professional sports (witness the recent failures of John Drew of the Utah Jazz and John Lucas of the Houston Rockets to remain abstinent from cocaine use, resulting in their being waived out of the NBA ). "I see a lot of Micheal Ray Richardsons out there," Grantham says, "and they're all chasing the dream."

This is a story of one athlete's dream.

In 1961, when Micheal Ray was six, he moved with his newly divorced mother, two older brothers and three younger sisters from Lubbock , Texas , his birthplace, to a high-crime, low-income neighborhood in Denver . His mother worked as a cook in a hospital. She gave birth to another child in 1966, was remarried in 1971 and was divorced again in 1973. Even with the help of her mother, who later moved in with the family, Luddie Mae Hicks says it was a struggle to support her seven children—but never, she says, on account of Micheal Ray.

"Micheal Ray was a momma's child," she says approvingly. "If I said I was sick, he would sit with me on my bed until I felt better. He was very sweet. His whole life was basketball and working. He would play basketball; then, when the circus or stock show or the Rockets [the ABA franchise now known as the Nuggets] were in town, he'd be out selling popcorn and peanuts."

Richardson's interest in basketball came naturally: Manual High, his neighborhood school, was a perennial power in the '60s and early '70s (former UCLA player and coach Larry Farmer is an alumnus). But Richardson didn't start for the varsity until he was a senior—1973-74. Even then, as a 6'3", 160-pound forward, he was overshadowed by teammate Phil Taylor , a 6'8" center who eventually signed with Arizona .