The life and legacy of Knicks character Michael Ray Richardson: ‘He had such a big heart’

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.”