Mitch Richmond Hall Of Fame Induction: Some Things You May Not Have Known

Mitch Richmond Hall Of Fame Induction: Some Things You May Not Have Known (Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account)

Shooting guard Mitch Richmond, who spent his first three years in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors as a member of the famed #RunTMC trio with Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway, is being inducted into the Basketball Hall Of Fame today and a couple recent articles by long-time Bay Area sportswriters shed some light on some interesting tidbits.

Carl Steward of the San Jose Mercury News offered these nuggets:

• “I still consider myself a Warrior,” (Richmond) said. “Being a Warrior was the most fun I ever had playing basketball.”
• While it’s widely known that former Warriors head coach Don Nelson admitted trading Richmond was a mistake, apparently it wasn’t all Nellie’s fault: “We should have never made that trade. I got talked into that one. There was pressure within our organization to get bigger after we got beat in the playoffs,” Nelson said to Steward in the interview.
• Richmond: “A lot of people don’t know this, but I still lived in Oakland my first three years while playing up there (for the Sacramento Kings) and I was traveling back and forth. My heart was still in Oakland.”
• Richmond would visit Mullin in New York during the off-season: “It reminded me of college, how we hung out together off the court.”

Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle had these:

• Richmond used his anger from being traded by Nellie as fuel for his play: “I played angry – that’s kind of what propelled me. I never really got past the anger, to tell you the truth.”
• Nellie formally apologized to Richmond in an “awkward” conversation, as described by Mullin, during Golden State’s 2007 #WeBelieve playoff run while in Dallas. At the time, Nelson was head coach and Mullin was general manager, and Richmond worked in the front office for Mullin.
• “(Michael) Jordan once described Richmond as the toughest opponent for him to defend,” writes Kroichick.

Here are Richmond’s Top 10 plays of his career, two of which were with the Warriors. Check for the Winston Garland reference!

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