The Glory Years
From 1956 to 1979, Powers had few peers in the business of officiating. He was part fan, part martinet, a flamboyant dictator with a quick whistle and a quicker wit. "This is the NBA, not the forensic society," he’d tell the guilty party. He clearly loved what he was doing.
__"I used to come out on the court and my two feet would hit the floor — boom, boom — and I’d be home," he said. "It was like, ‘Beat me if you can. But I dare you. Nothing is going to happen here tonight that I am not in control of.’"
__You don’t have to take his word for it. Years after he’s held a whistle, he still is remembered in illustrious terms, even by those Powers feels he had alienated over his career.
__Earl Strom, for example, was never someone Powers listed as a friend. But ask Strom about Powers the Referee and Earl’s response is candid: "Richie has to go down as one of the greatest of all time. He was stern, with a strong command of the rules, and he had everyone’s respect. Put it this way: If it’s the seventh game of the championship series, there’s no other guy I’d rather have across the floor from me."
__Jack Ramsay, the former Portland coach: "He (Powers) was at the top, in my opinion: Fair, tough, stylish and it was obvious he liked the people involved."
__Dick Motta, the current Sacramento coach: "He was a real pro. When you were out there, there was no messing around. You never saw a ref who had such complete control of a game at all times."
__And Jerry West: "I gauge a referee’s effectiveness by his judgment and by his willingness to admit mistakes, which can diffuse potential conflicts instead of allowing (resentment) to build. From that perspective, Richie was at the top of the list during my playing career."
__Being the best was one of his three ambitions, Powers points out. Another was lasting 20 seasons: Mission accomplished. The third proved to be more elusive: Becoming supervisor of NBA referees. The one quality he had always taken pride in, after all, was his ability to teach. "They always paired younger refs and all the problem referees with me," he recalled.

The Fall From Grace
But in 1977, when he first applied for the position, he was turned down in favor of Norm Drucker. Three seasons later, when Drucker left, the supervisor’s job was restructured. Officiating then became the responsibility of the league’s director of operations. At the same time, Darell Garretson was named (and remains today) chief of staff of NBA referees. He reported directly to Joe Axelson, the first director of operations. Axelson was succeeded by Scotty Stirling and then current operations director, Rod Thorn.
__Ever since Garretson became chief of staff, he has been the object of Powers’ rancor. The origin of bitterness can be traced to the formative years of the officials’ union, circa 1974-78. Powers and Strom were the only referees who on the eve of the 1977 playoffs didn’t join their peers on the picket line. Strom weathered the storm and finished a career that will likely be rewarded with a Hall of Fame induction. But for Powers, it was the first step toward professional suicide.
__"In retrospect, it was a mistake my not striking," Powers said. "Darell, as union president, led the parade. I made a lot of enemies. But what the union didn’t understand was I am not a team player. I was in and out of the union three times, and as early as 1957, when Mendy Rudolph tried to band us together and march into the office of (then commissioner) Maurice Podoloff, I said: ‘Leave me out of it. If I don’t get what I want, I don’t expect anyone to strike on my account.’
__"Besides, by 1977, I was the only referee with a contract and I was obligated to uphold it morally, legally, professionally. So I stayed at work and for that I was ostracized. My rating among my fellow officials went from the top to virtually the bottom overnight.’
__Powers worked the Portland-Philadelphia title series with Norm Drucker, and in an attempt to reaffirm his value, applied for the job held by outgoing supervisor John Nucatola. Powers lobbied for the position with deputy commissioner Simon Gourdine, who instead chose Drucker.
__"Richie became more disenchanted, more argumentative, after he got turned down," recalled Strom. "He became more difficult to be around. Drucker was an outstanding supervisor — the best ever — but Richie was very qualified for the position. I don’t think he ever recovered from that."
__"I told Simon, ‘I’m not angry, but what your decision is going to do is kill me,’" Powers said. "They were now out to get me. Some time later, Gourdine told me that the referees said, ‘If Powers gets the job, you won’t have referees."’
__If you contact Gourdine today at the NBA Players’ Assn., where he is an attorney, you’ll learn he has no recollection of such exchanges. He speaks well of Powers, calling him "A first-rate referee, very talented and dedicated." But not only could Gourdine not recall considering Powers for the position in 1977 — "Did Richie really apply?" — he couldn’t even remember selecting Drucker.
__"I do remember," Gourdine said, "that Richie was having a tough time with his colleagues then." Those tough times were only a precursor for the rest of his life.

Fines and Suspensions Lead to Being Fired
The remainder of Powers’ career included two incidents that are now the stuff of ignominious legend. The first took place in February 1978 at Piscataway, where Powers, wary of the constant, foul-mouthed badgering he would ordinarily take from coaches Kevin Loughery and Hubie Brown, came up with a unique solution: He told the Nets and Hawks that they can "play your zones, just don’t allow it to look like a high school 1-3-1, leave the referees alone and we’ll have a great game."
__So they did much to the delight of Powers and Lee Jones. No one protested, verbally or officially, not even Brown’s losing Hawks. But because there happened to be one sportswriter in the building that night, and he had the foresight to study the rudimentary aspects of the game, word got out. And Powers was suspended for three weeks and fined $2,500.
__The second occurred Nov. 8, 1978, at the Spectrum, when Powers hit both Loughery and then rookie Bernard King with their third technical fouls, over the "limit" of two prescribed by an unwritten rule. For that transgression, which Powers says took place only because fellow refs Ed Middleton and Roger McCann chose not to remind him of the T’s issued in the first half, Powers was fined and suspended again.
__"By then, I was just disenchanted with... the whole system," he recalled. "I remember my last game, at Detroit, working with two guys who had the combined experience of about a month, feeling lousy from a cold. I’m standing at midcourt, two players contend for the ball at my feet and I make the out-of-bounds call. On the other side of the court, the guy calls a foul, which takes precedence. I asked him at halftime, ‘Do you know what you just did?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I called a foul.’ So I said, ‘I might as well go home then.’"
__His expression freezes into a zombie-like stare, not unlike that of someone who had been struck a mighty blow across the back of the head with a shovel. "It became obvious that my time was done," he said. "I mean, wasn’t that obvious? I could call this game better by myself than with two others. There’s no sense me showing up. What the hell was I being paid for?"
__Five months later, Drucker fired Powers. At the age of 49, Powers was finished. In three years, he had gone from the best in his profession to someone who could no longer do the job.
__"In his time, Richie was a good ref," Drucker said recently. "But he did some weird things. Where does a ref come off vacating the rules like he did that time in Piscataway? It reached a point where he couldn’t officiate any more."

Becoming a ‘Civilian’
Powers didn’t exactly welcome his forced idleness, but at least initially, it appeared to be a blessing. He was, and is after all, loquacious, articulate and charming, with a natural curiosity about people and things. He also had name recognition, rare for officials of 1970’s standards. So the logical second career he pursued, after a year of golfing and drinking, was broadcasting.
__He cut his teeth at some smaller stations, such as USA Network and Madison Square Garden Network, the former being an opportunity aided by some golfing connections. Then, because of his irreverent style, Powers got the attention of a producer for WABC in New York.
__"I did mostly offbeat stuff and I guess I had the personality for it," Powers said. "Stuff like interviewing a kid in the street before the (1981) Giants-Eagles’ playoff game. The kid said he liked the Eagles — Bop! I hit him on the head with the microphone and said, ‘You be outta town by sundown.’ The studio went crazy. They loved that stuff. I was just glad the mike was padded. But they loved that stuff and encouraged it. It was a fun job."
__It lasted nearly four years, a relatively long time by New York broadcast standards, before he was released from his contract. A year later, Powers read an article about a fledgling summer league called the United States Basketball League (USBL). On a whim, he called them and within a few weeks became USBL vice-president, wrote the entire rulebook and began negotiating what he thought would be a peaceful coexistence with the NBA.
__But the NBA, instead of embracing the new league as a viable showcase for unknown free agents, did just the opposite: It viewed the USBL as an unsanctioned, unwanted competitor. The USBL’s inaugural season was therefore doomed; shortly after midseason, the NBA, to fill summer-camp rosters, had stripped the USBL of most of its players.
__"It went so wrong in a hurry," Powers said. "It started off great, because we got some personalities: Spud Webb, Manute Bol. We gave Hot Rod Williams his start, because the NBA wanted no part of him (because of alleged gambling involvement at Tulane University). We even got the cover of Sports Illustrated.
__"Then the NBA cleaned us out three-fifths of the way through the season. We got wiped out and it was my fault. I should have known it would happen, but to my everlasting discredit, it never crossed my mind. Nothing hurt me as badly. You can rationalize after the fact that anyone can make mistakes. But the point is, I like making decisions because I know when I’m right, because my aim is usually righteous. And I should have anticipated what happened."
__Powers did little in the ensuing years. His second marriage, which lasted 20 years, ended in 1987. "My life was screwed up. Well, I was screwing up my life is more like it," he said.
__In 1988, he drifted down to Washington, D.C., for another attempt to get back into broadcasting. He applied for an on-air position with Home Team Sports, a cable network, but the job fell through at the last moment. Money was tight. He tried selling cable subscriptions. He drove limousines for a time. He tried selling cars. For six months, his bed was the back seat of a station wagon on the dealer’s showroom floor.
__Friends, whom he had in abundance, didn’t hear from him for nearly two years. "I was down and dirty," he says, almost whispering. "I was at my wits’ end."

Trying to End It All
There was a saying that would occasionally come to mind, something Powers had heard in the early 1960’s from a fellow referee from his old neighborhood, Parkchester, in the Bronx.
__Some credit Powers with the origin of this, the referee’s credo, but he says it belonged to Dolly Stark: "Officiating," Stark told Powers, "is the only profession in which the greatest accolade is deathly silence."
__So now it was 1989, in a small garage near Germantown, Md., and Richie Powers had concluded that silence was more a curse than an accolade; just another way of describing the abject solitude he felt, embracing him as tightly as the front seat of the car on which he lay. The car’s engine was running and its windows were open.
__If only there was a difference between living and feeling needed, he thought. The notion made him smile 30 years ago: It couldn’t happen to him, right? Ten years later, it made him laugh. But it was the kind of superficial laughter reserved for bad jokes by good friends and the fickle nature of success, both of which he had in such abundance.
__Now all those friends and all that success had been replaced by homelessness, destitution and failure. And silence, the kind that forms an insularity from all that is truly alive and vibrant. The kind of noise carbonmonoxide poisoning probably makes.
__Nearly 20 minutes passed before he finally switched off the car’s engine and opened the garage door.
__"It wasn’t the only time I had thought of ending... the breathing part of it," said Powers. "I had tried taking pills once, but all they did was put me to sleep. I don’t know what made me turn off the car, whether it was my Catholicism or just my impatience. Whatever, I had a great profession, for which I was very accomplished and dedicated. I felt I had a positive effect on every game I ever worked.
__"But the thing I miss most about it, beyond the notoriety and the financial rewards, is that I just wasn’t doing much good anymore. For any thing or anyone."
__For a year, he battled daily thoughts of suicide as he moved around various venues of the Northeast, living in YMCA’s or out of his car. "If I had had a gun, and the courage, I’d have killed myself," he said. "Every day I’d wake up at five in the morning and think, ‘Well, what’s it going to be today? And I’d probably be dead if Danny didn’t call me."
__Dan Meisenheimer, that is. He is the USBL president and he recalled Powers to his side last September to help build a new league, map out a plan that wouldn’t meddle with the whims of the mighty NBA, and secure franchises in the Northeast. So far Powers, as the USBL’s director of operations, has delivered some commitments with other irons in the fire. And, as of this spring, the USBL is planning to begin its season in June.
__But recently, there have been changes in Powers’ personal life that are far more significant. In late March, he finally conceded what his friends had told him for years: That he has a drinking problem. And thanks to the persistent prodding and financial aid from a long-time friend, Terry Fiorito, Powers enrolled in a detox center in Connecticut. Fiorito also has set up a fund to help Powers. (Address listed at end of story.)
__He is 60 now, "Never thought I’d make it," he said, almost whispering — with the same white hair and sparkling green eyes he had at 45. There are no visible scars from his troubled middle age, aside from a need for some dental work, as it takes him more than an hour to get through a hamburger. He is still wonderful company, even when his conversation wanders off into some labyrinth of interior monologue: "We were in Buffalo one night... or was it Cleveland? Come to think of it, it was...." His humor is often self-deprecating, sometimes overly so.
__But there is a doleful quality as well: What family he has, he never sees; what friends he left behind still wonder why he took so long to seek their help; what life he had can no longer be.
__"I had always thought that embarrassment was what kept Richie away all these years," said one of his oldest friends, Mike DiTomasso, a Westchester County attorney, former college and NBA referee and ex-vice-president of the New Jersey Nets. "What he didn’t realize, I think, was that there was never a more fun individual to be around, and that his friends could miss him."

Critical ‘What If’s’
The topic of discussion turned to Larry O’Brien, the former politico and NBA commissioner who died last October. During Powers’ career, he had worked for two men he had considered his friends: Maurice Podoloff and Walter Kennedy. O’Brien was different.
__"He was a bureaucrat, but a courageous man," said Powers. "I remember meeting him in his office at the Empire State Building, with that green carpet and those two steps up where his desk was — higher than the peaks of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, looking down on God. And nothing on his desk but a gigantic ashtray that looked like a tabernacle.
__"Anyway, we were flying from Indianapolis to La Guardia — him smoking incessantly, me gagging — and in between we were talking about the impending referees’ strike. I told him that I planned to honor my contract. You know what he said to me? He said: ‘Don’t set any precedents. Think about your position.’
__"It took a while to grasp his meaning, but he was saying: ‘Look, you stupid Irish jerk. Look at it again. Back away.’ It was a helluva thing for an employer to tell an employee. His message was clear: If you break away from your group, you’re going to suffer very serious consequences.
__"He was trying to be a friend, not a boss. And he was right. I should have taken his advice. If I had struck, things probably would have been very different. I’d probably still be in the NBA."
__He paused to think about the life that might have been. His memories mix and tumble in wondrous patterns, memories about players with games he liked and personalities he tolerated; memories of Mendy Rudolph ("I hated the swarthy bastard and the feeling was mutual"); and of Powers’ Boston Irish father ("You know, I never learned where he was from — great guy, but he lied so much, I just don’t know").
__Flashbacks to train stations where Powers thought of jumping onto the tracks; memories of surreptitious behavior of his unionized peers; memories of Powers’ baseball career at St. John’s; images of the McClosky Home in White Plains, where he recovered from having every bone in his right foot smashed at the age of nine by a truck driven by the father of Powers’ best friend.
__Flashbacks to an obsession he had with golf, which he hasn’t played in five years; memories of all other events that have contributed to his 60 years; and always — always — memories of the career he loved that was lifted out from under him.
__His glass was empty. He looked at it sadly. "See, for me, the whole thing is succeeding," he said. "Yeah, I have a job, but I’m not succeeding. What I want is to be back teaching referees. It’s what I do best. I always thought I had something important to teach them."

__(Dave DAlessandro lives in Fort Lee, N.J. He is a staff writer for The National Sports Daily.)

A Long Way Down