The life and legacy of Knicks' Michael Ray Richardson

Michael Ray Richardson played for eight seasons in the NBA, four of those with the Knicks. Getty Images

Michael “Sugar” Ray Richardson wasn’t confined by structure, by play calls. That was just his style, his freestyling nature , a mentality many who knew him described as fearless and utterly unpredictable.

But also, they describe Richardson’s stutter. Everybody remembers that stutter, which was most obvious when Sugar was excited.

“Larry [Brown] had a play he would call, and it was ‘four down,'” said Buck Williams, who was Richardson’s teammate with the New Jersey Nets for parts of four seasons, in a phone interview with The Post. “So Sugar would say, f-f-f-f-f-f-four down.

“By the time he got four out, the play would be over.”