Jews for Michael Ray

To whom it may concern:

This Jew would like to vouch for Michael Ray Richardson.

He is a lover not a hater of Jews as well as every other variety of human being, and he does not deserve to be run out of professional basketball for his allegedly "anti-semitic" remarks.

For those who may have missed this story, Richardson, the one time Knick and Net star, was suspended yesterday from his job as head coach of the Albany Patroons after the second game of the CBA's championship series.

ESPN reported:
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Before Tuesday's game against the Yakima Sun Kings, Richardson made anti-Semitic comments to two reporters in his office when discussing the contract general manager Jim Coyne had offered him Monday to coach his team in the CBA and USBL.

"I've got big-time lawyers," Richardson said, according to the Times Union. "I've got big-time Jew lawyers."

When told by the reporters that the comment could be offensive to people because it plays to the stereotype that Jews are crafty and shrewd, he responded with, "Are you kidding me? They are. They've got the best security system in the world. Have you ever been to an airport in Tel Aviv? They're real crafty. Listen, they are hated all over the world, so they've got to be crafty."

And he continued, "They got a lot of power in this world, you know what I mean?" he said. "Which I think is great. I don't think there's nothing wrong with it. If you look in most professional sports, they're run by Jewish people. If you look at a lot of most successful corporations and stuff, more businesses, they're run by Jewish. It's not a knock, but they are some crafty people."
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In 2001, I did a story for the Village Voice, about Michael Ray's long road back from cocaine addiction and his adventures in International basketball. Richardson was the first player to be expelled from the NBA under the “the three strikes” drug rule. Forced to play abroad, his first stop was in Tel Aviv. I caught up with him fifteen years later in Livorno, where he was then playing in the Italian B League at the age of 44, and he told me about his time in Israel:

"You think it's going to be an awful place. You just see bombs going off all the time, but it ain't like that." He starts talking about a club in Tel Aviv called Cinerama. "On Thursday and Friday nights, you'd get 4000, 5000 people in there. Yeah. There's another side of Israel too." He raises his eyebrows and turns down the corners of his mouth. "Let me tell you something. Them Jews know how to party."

It didn't make the Voice's edit of my piece, but Michael Ray went on to tell me about a James Brown performance in Tel Aviv:

"James Brown! The Godfather of Soul. Oh, he came with the leg kick and everything. He had it goin' on. Hummm. I never see them Jews have that much fun in they life. You know, for us blacks, James Brown is like Elvis Presley. He's our king. James Brown! James Brown will go all over the world!"

Michael Ray Richardson doesn't speak politically correct English. He isn’t the guy who knows it may be more expedient to say: "The Jewish people have a deeply celebratory spirit." He’s the dude that says, "Them Jews know how to party!" But if you hear him say it, you know his heart is in the right place. He was proud of James Brown, and he was happy that Israelis could appreciate a performer who he felt represented to a certain extent the collective spirit of his people. It clearly made him feel more at home and more comfortable in Israel. If they could truly appreciate James Brown, you could feel him thinking, maybe they could truly understand and appreciate him.

I really can’t think of any better way to illustrate that Michael Ray is the opposite of a racist. Confronted with the reality of Israel he abandoned preconceived notions and evaluated people on how they actually behaved. Michael Ray has done that in every country he’s been to. And that’s why he’s been loved all around the world.

Now because he has the temerity to say that Jews are good lawyers, Jews are industrious people, Jews use their wits to get ahead in a world where they are more often hated than loved, we are going to excommunicate him from basketball like he’s Tim Hardaway or Al Campanis.

It’s not right. Michael Ray is proud to have a Jewish lawyer because he thinks they are the best lawyers. Certainly it’s a stereotype, but it’s a stereotype rooted in a reality. A disproportionate number of the great lawyers in America are Jews. A disproportionate number of the great basketball players in America are black. We have learned to be very careful around these facts because here the line between fact and "stereotype" can get very blurry and if you're not careful, you can get into deep water real quick. Michael Ray was unwise to have been so indiscreet around reporters, but it wasn't exactly Elders of Zion territory.

That Michael Ray later apparently called a fan who heckled him a “faggot”, I’m not going to try to defend. For me, it’s much more of a problem than his remarks about Jews. He should know better than to use that word. But I guarantee Michael Ray, unlike Tim Hardaway, does not actually hate homosexuals any more than he hates Jews.

Michael Ray simply has not learned how to talk differently in public than he does in private. Michael Ray does not censor himself. That’s why he has always been quotable. That’s what’s “shocking” about his remarks. They are not hateful or malicious. They are candid and politically incorrect. Not politically incorrect in the tradition of Al Campanis whose remarks revealed the unspoken assumptions behind a shameful and unwritten policy of exclusion. They were just words better left unsaid in public.

So Benito Fernandez, Jim Coyne, David Stern--or whoever calls the shots on this one--please give Michael Ray some sensitivity training, give him a spanking, and then let him back in the good graces of the CBA.

He is a good man and he doesn’t deserve to be run out of town.