Sugar Ray Richardson managed to keep his light even when darkness threatened it

Let’s start with the words of a man named Earvin Johnson, known to the world as “Magic,” who, when he speaks about the position of point guard, talks with the authority of J. Robert Oppenheimer on the splitting of the atom.

This was Magic, to me, in May 2020:

“When I was playing, the one player I enjoyed watching more than anyone else was Sugar Ray Richardson. When I saw him, I saw a smaller version of me. I had four inches on him. But he did everything else just as well as I did.”

Let that serve as the greatest possible epitaph for Michael Ray Richardson, who died Tuesday at 70 after a battle with prostate cancer, who was an All-Star for both the Knicks and the Nets and was ticketed for Springfield, Mass., and the Hall of Fame before his NBA career was derailed by cocaine.