Sports books to consider to help you get through winter …
(To make it easy for you to buy any of these books if you are interested, I made each image linked to buying the book right on amazon.com or bookshop.org. I do get a commission if you use the links in this post.)
By Michael Ray Richardson and Jake Uitti
Sports Publishing (2024)
This is an autobiography written in first person by one of the NBA’s most enigmatic figures.
Actually, it was written by Jake Uiitti, a nice young man from Seattle who is listed as “co-author” and has corresponded with me in the past.
It is not the first book written on Richardson, a four-time All-Star who played eight seasons with the Knicks, Warriors and Nets from 1978-86. Charley Rosen’s “Sugar” was published in 2018. In “Banned,” Richardson writes, “I had nothing to do with (Sugar) … that guy’s book is a joke.”
(Since his college days at Montana, Richardson’s nickname was “Sugar.” He writes, “The moniker was somewhat of an ironic one, a commentary on my failures as much as my talent.”)
Richardson’s credentials are substantial. He was a two-time first-time All-Defensive Team selection, Comeback Player of the Year in 1984-85, a three-time steals leader with 21 triple-doubles and career averages of 14.8 points, 7.0 assists and 2.6 steals.
His NBA career, however, was shortened by multiple drug violations. The 6-5 guard was suspended in 1986 at age 30 under the “Three Strikes” policy, first-ever to get a lifetime suspension. He played in the U.S. minor leagues from 1986-88. Richardson — who turns 70 in April — regained the right to play in NBA in 1988 but chose to spend the rest of his playing career in Europe, where he played for 14 seasons, until he was 47.
Uitti procured testimonials to Richardson that are interspersed throughout the book from the likes of Spencer Haywood, Bob McAdoo, Reggie Theus, Michael Cooper and Buck Williams. Also, from children Michael Amir Richardson, Corey Richardson, Tamara Richardson, Kimberly Richardson and wife Kim.
Nancy Lieberman wrote the foreword, Otis Birdsong the preface. Richardson was a popular guy with many, but a person who simply could never overcome his demons.
Michael owns up, mostly. He starts right off, “Whenever my name is brought up in basketball circles, so too are my troubles with drugs.” He has a lot to ‘fess up to.
One of six children raised in a single-parent household, his early years being in Lubbock, Texas, Michael became an earnest but unsophisticated young adult whose way out of poverty was basketball.
During the height of his playing career, he must have been a lot of work for his agent. He writes that at one point he “signed several shoe deals at once.” Those kind of things don’t work out well.
As a teammate, he could be a bad-ass. In Italy, he was suspended after getting into a fistfight with a teammate. “I got a glass Gatorade bottle, smashed it on a railing and threatened him with the jagged thing,” he writes. In another incident, he cold-cocked a teammate during a practice, knocking him out. “Sometimes a team needs to get a fire under its ass,” he writes. “It can rally troops, not quell them.” Sounds like a delusion to me.
Richardson says he began using cocaine during his third season, quickly advancing from snorting to free-basing. “Everyone used drugs back then,” he writes. No, but there certainly was abundant use of marijuana and cocaine by NBA players in the ‘80s. Drug testing was instituted in 1983. Richardson went through treatment centers many times before the NBA ban was enacted.
He finally got off drugs and says he has been sober for 30-plus years. After his playing career ended, he served as head coach in basketball’s pro minor leagues, winning several championships.
As a coach, he writes, “I got more technical fouls than I should have, and sometimes I wouldn’t shake the opposing coach’s hand.” He was suspended in one playoff series for shouting an anti-gay slur to some heckling fans.
Richardson makes a lot of boastful comments in describing how he matched up against peers such as Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas. His all-time starting five? “Michael Jordan, George Gervin, Bob McAdoo, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and myself.”
Richardson is frank about his penchant to seek female companionship through his playing career. He calls women “my kryptonite.” He readily admits to not being faithful to, at least, his first three wives. (Near as I can tell, he has been married four times.)
“Monogamy was never really important to me,” he writes. “It’s not that I felt that way out of disrespect to any particular person. It was more out of a respect for myself and how I felt about relationships. … I enjoyed chasing women.”
He writes that he was a regular at such New York City night spots as Studio 54, Plato’s Retreat and the Cotton Club. “Over time, I began making a name for myself in these places,” he writes.
Uitti could have used some help with copyediting. There are redundant sentences in several spots and a number of missing words. “Triple-doubles” becomes “Trouble-doubles.” Also, there is more profane language than I would prefer as a reader.
About Bill Musselman, who coached him in the CBA, Richardson writes, “After every game, he’d go to a bar and get drunk. His face would turn red as a tomato. The man, I’m sorry to say, suffered a stroke after coaching a Portland Trail Blazers game in 1999.”
While Musselman wasn’t a teetotaler, I have never heard that he had alcohol problems. I got to know Muss during his three seasons as a Trail Blazer assistant at the end of his career and was quite fond of him. He was intense and old-school, tough and ornery but a good basketball man. He did suffer a stroke in 1999 and died at age 59 of heart and kidney failure in May 2000 while the Blazers were still alive in the NBA playoffs. I attended his memorial service after the season, and virtually every player was there.
There is enough good material in this book to make it interesting to the NBA fan. Richardson is a sad but compelling figure.
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Triumph Books (2023)
This biography of Pittsburgh Steelers great Troy Polamalu is evidently a book that was more than a decade in the making. Wexell is a long-time Pittsburgh sportswriter — he doesn’t specify for whom, other than mentioning working 25 years for “Steelers Digest” — and has written at least three other Steelers-centric books.
Polamalu — who grew up in Tenmile, just outside of Roseburg, from the age of nine and attended Douglas High — didn’t cooperate with the book. Just too humble, Wexell writes, and not eager to talk about himself.
But the Hall of Fame safety also didn’t object to Wexell talking to family members, friends and former teammates for the book project. The author leaned heavily on family, especially Salu and Shelley Polamalu, Troy’s uncle and aunt who took Troy in and raised him from the time his mother sent him north to escape from the gang-related, drug-infested environment he had been experiencing in Southern California.
(While I was at the Portland Tribune and while Troy was still playing, I made a stab at getting an interview through his aunt. Shelley was very nice but was unable to hook me up with Troy.)
Salu and Shelley were Wexell’s go-to sources, but he got plenty of material from other family members and also from many of the former teammates at USC and with the Steelers. The author also had a sufficient number of quotes from Troy himself through 12 seasons of media coverage of the team.
There were even a few observations from brother Tom Eggers, the long-time sports editor of the Roseburg News-Review. That was nice to see.
If you are a Steeler fan, you will love the detailed review of each of Polamalu’s 12 seasons (2003-14). If not, like me, you might think there is too much play-by-play through each of his seasons.
Wexell emphasizes the grace, humility, dignity and character Polamalu displayed through his career, both on the field and in his personal life. He is clearly an unusual man, and Wexell does a nice job of turning the spotlight on a person who seems to have gone to great lengths to avoid that kind of attention.
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Inside the Insane World of Sports Today
ProMotion Publishing (1997)
The self-proclaimed “No. 1-ranked and most unstoppable player in NBA history” had a lot to get off his chest when he wrote this book — and “The Big Dipper” had a very big chest.
The book was written 23 years after he retired from the NBA. Sadly, two years after the book was published, Chamberlain died of congestive heart failure at age 63.
I interviewed Wilt for The Oregonian in March 1997, and he mentioned he was in the process of writing this book. Twenty-eight years later, I ordered it from Amazon.
It is a book full of opinions. There is a certain genius to some of his comments. There is arrogance, too, in some of them.
The big fella had complaints about just about everything in the world of sports as the 21st century approached. He couldn’t believe the outrageous contracts in the NBA (“Derrick Coleman turned down $70 million!” “How in the world can Kenny Anderson form the words necessary to ask for the salary he is getting?”).
Yet he bragged about his own contract in the 1960s, saying he was paid salaries in six figures when the league’s other stars were making less than $25,000.
“I’m here to tell you folks that most of these guys (if they had to) would play for $100,000 a year,” Wilt writes. “But we are paying some of them $100,000 a game!”
That would compute to $8.2 million a season. Imagine what Chamberlain’s reaction would be to the average NBA salary in 2024-25 — $11.9 million.
Wilt hated showboats but also seemed to resent that a reputed good guy like Grant Hill got so many All-Star votes.
Chamberlain dissed Shaquille O’Neal and didn’t like the obvious comparisons between the two. He ripped Shaq for breaking down backboards “just for the show.”
Funny, though: He liked Gheorghe Muresan, the 7-7 giant who had been named the NBA’s Most Improved Player in 1996, the year before he wrote the book. Wilt posited that “he possesses more talent than Shaq. If I had to choose, I would take Gheorghe Muresan.”
Wilt ripped Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf for not standing for the national anthem and the NBA for not suspending him. He picked an “All-Fat” NBA team, replete with a “Blubber Bench.” Wilt hated the chest-thumping “after each field goal, and the hand-touching and slapping after each trip to the foul line, whether the shot is made or not.” I couldn’t agree more with that.
Chamberlain held great respect for Arvydas Sabonis, “who should have been named Rookie of the Year,” he wrote. “At 34 and despite two bad knees, Sabonis is tearing most of the centers apart. He is able to do this because his play is fundamentally sound. Using a sound knowledge of the game, he has made himself look better than most players who are younger and in far better physical shape.”
Like old adversary Bill Russell, Wilt had disdain for autograph seekers. He actually was mostly complimentary about Russell and picked him on his all-time team.
Dennis Rodman had a special place in Wilt’s doghouse. “I thought I had seen it all, but watching Rodman swap kisses with one of the better-known transvestites at a Miami club called ‘Bash’ shocked even me. … there is a right way and a wrong way to carry out your public life. Privacy should be engaged a little more often. I am not questioning Rodman’s right, only the wrongness of bringing it all into sight. The world sure has changed!”
Rodman was suspended six games and fined $20,000 for head-butting a referee. Wilt wrote that it wasn’t enough.
He offered compliments for plow-horse centers Bill Wennington, Luc Longley and Will Perdue: “Though they appear to have less innate ability than some of the bigger talents, the small things they do on a regular basis are big reasons why their teams win.”
Wilt dissed Shawn Kemp (“the biggest in-and-outer I have ever seen”) and bombarded Dick Vitale.
“His use of the English language and the thoughts he chooses to express are borderline idiotic,” Wilt wrote. “Those who hire him should be aware that people watch him only because he acts like a clown. I’d like to believe that a personality like Vitale’s is not needed to sell today’s sports. Give me Vin Scully any day.”
Chamberlain ripped TV and radio analysts for not being more critical when justified. “Too many announcers are kissie-assie and show a shortage of backbone.” Amen.
Chamberlain respected Michael Jordan and considered him a very hard worker. But he wrote that basketball is a team game, and if his teammates hadn’t made “heroic” shots, he would have won only one championship “and the public would regard him differently.”
(Wilt also resented that Jordan often was chosen to shoot free throws after “three or four technical fouls” a game, which jacked up his scoring average.)
Wilt had some clever lines. He said he tried everything to improve his foul shooting in games, including visits to a psychologist. “The result: He became a brilliant foul shooter, and I learned how to analyze people.”
Another: “I like being tall. It puts me farther away literally and figuratively, from so many a—holes.”
Chamberlain also confirmed the rumor that during his freshman year at Kansas he initially dunked his free throws before the NCAA outlawed it.
Wilt saved his greatest antipathy for Mike Tyson.
“The Boxing Federation should never allow him to make as much money as he does while he remains so unappreciative of the opportunities this country provides him,” he wrote. “Tyson gets an incredible bad-boy image, then uses it to increase his chances of making more moolah. We allow individuals like Tyson to repeatedly do things that reflect negatively on all athletes — especially on men of color.”
This assertion made me laugh: “When I gave up using my natural gift — my ability to score a great many points — I was acting unselfishly. … when I was to give the ball to someone else, even though they couldn’t do the job one-tenth as well, I did so in the spirit of team unity. … in all my years of playing basketball and observing the game, I have come across only one truly unselfish player: me. I gave up being the leading scorer in the history of the game in order to cater to my teams’ whims by passing the ball to the likes of Keith Erickson, Happy Hairston or Pat Riley, guys who could not shoot a lick.”
This one made me laugh even more: “When I talk in negative terms about sports figures and situations, I do so only in the hope that the end result will be constructive.”
Wilt could have used a competent copy editor. He mistook John “Hot Plate” Williams for Brian Williams, who later became Bison Dele. He misnamed or misspelled Del (Dale) Harris, John (Havlichek) Havlicek, Al (Orter) Oerter and referred to John Paxson as “Bill Paxton.” (Paxton was an actor.) There were also a plethora of redundancies as he told the same story or offered the same opinion twice or even three times.
I guarantee you Chamberlain — he calls himself “Wiltie” — felt better after writing this book. It had to be a cathartic exercise for a complicated soul and old-school proponent who would have been even more lost in today’s “look at me!” world.
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