Michael Ray Richardson, a four-time All-Star with the Knicks and Nets who starred in Europe after the NBA banned him due to his cocaine use, died of prostate cancer Tuesday. He was 70.<\/p>\n
“The NBA mourns the passing of four-time All-Star Michael Ray Richardson,” the league said<\/a> in a social-media statement. “Michael dedicated his post-NBA career to using his life story to teach life skills to young people.”<\/p>\n Born in Lubbock, Texas, Richardson\u2014whose name was often rendered as “Micheal”\u2014played collegiately for Montana. He made a trio of All-Big Sky teams for the Grizzlies and remains second on the school’s scoring list.<\/p>\n Drafted fourth by New York in 1978, he immediately established himself as a star by leading the league in both assists and steals in 1981. Two trades led him to New Jersey, where he made a fourth All-Star team in 1985 before a third positive cocaine test in three years resulted in a lifetime ban.<\/p>\n “When you get like that, you lose all sense of yourself. You become a zombie. Your only thoughts are when you’ll be getting high next and for how long. It’s a parasite and you don’t care about anything but pacifying it,” Richardson wrote in his 2024 memoir<\/a>.<\/p>\n