‘Drugs were everywhere’: the rise and fall of the NBA’s cocaine era

Recreational drug use boomed in the 1980s and basketball was far from immune. The trend ended careers as the NBA clamped down

Micheal Ray Richardson was a brilliant player: a four-time NBA All-Star guard. He was also the first player banned for life by the league for drug use, something which was far more common during his playing days. Back in the 1980s, substances like cocaine were not only part of professional sports but also society and entertainment at large, and Richardson says talk about drugs was routine during what some still call the NBA’s cocaine era. “During warmups,” Richardson says, “guys on different teams would say, ‘Yo, man, I got what you’re looking for. Let’s get together when [the game] is over.’ And boom that’s how it got going.”

At the time, drugs were “everywhere – it was like a fad,” says Richardson, who also goes by the nickname Sugar. But in the NBA, it alienated many fans. So much so that to correct the problem, the NBA instituted a three-strike system, which led to Richardson’s 1986 banishment (all of which he discusses in his forthcoming memoir, Banned).

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