Richard Jefferson was one of the standout wings of the early 2000s, flying all around the court with the New Jersey Nets. Jefferson shared an incredible drinking story from his time with the Nets, where a night partying with the Toronto Raptors dance team led to one of the greatest games of his career.
Jefferson started by discussing the night, right from the moment he landed in the city.
“You have to. You’re playing basketball from September-October all the way to May-June. Every athlete can tell the story of one of their craziest nights after a bender. We landed in, I must have been 26 or 27 years old, we landed in Toronto. We had a game probably at 2 o’clock and my boy was like, ‘Let’s go out to Vince’s club in Toronto.'”
Jefferson went over to the club and was aiming for a low-key night when he realized the entire Raptors dance team was there having a party.
“We go there like we’re gonna have a couple of drinks, we’re going to hang out, no big deal. We’re sitting there at the bar and talking, and this girl walked by who had a shirt on which said ‘crazy b**ch’. I saw another girl walking by and it was like ‘wild b**ch.’ They all started walking by and I asked one of them, she was like ‘Oh, we’re the Toronto Raptors dance team, this is our Christmas Party’. I was like, ‘Bartender, can we get 25 shots immediately'”.
After getting drunk with the dance team, Jefferson revealed he got the number of one of the girls that night.
“They knew I played and was going to play against them the next day. We’re turning it on, getting drunk, how often are you gonna be the few guys and the entire Toronto Raptors dance team is all here to get drunk? I go to bed at 6 AM. I didn’t take anyone back but I did get a phone number.”
He had an afternoon game the next day against the Raptors and said he had one of the best games of his career, ending the game with 39 points.
“The next day, I had one of my greatest games. I had 20 points in the first half and I’m telling you, the game was an early tip. It wasn’t a regular 7:30, you can go get some rest. I had 20 points in the first half and I’m coming out, end up with like 39. I remember looking over at their whole dance team. They were all beautiful women but they looked haggard. They looked exhausted. The whole row of them. The one girl I got the number of, I texted her after the game and she said that all the girls were like, ‘He was drinking with us right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna have to sleep for two days, that was pure adrenaline.'”
Jefferson then discussed why NBA players can have such incredible drinking nights and still compete at the highest level.
“In the NBA, we’re all crazy and psychotic. the only way to be one of the 450 players in the world and stay there. You’re physically gifted and also a little psycho. You have those moments where you’re like ‘f**k it’, just go out there and get it done. But yeah, your teammates know. There are guys that reek of alcohol, throwing up at half-time. The league has changed but it used to be crazier.”
The story can be verified as a game from the 2004-05 season, as the Nets faced the Raptors in Toronto on December 19. He dropped 38 points on the night as the Nets lost the game by double-digits. Both teams were way below .500 at that point so the performance may have gone unnoticed at the time, but the lore behind how Jefferson did that makes it far more compelling.
RJ ended that game with 38 points, four rebounds, five assists, and two steals, shooting 11-20 from the field and going 3-7 on three-point attempts. He made it to the line 11 times and didn’t miss a single shot.
This was the fourth-highest-scoring game of his career, with performances against the Knicks (39 points), Bobcats (41 points), and Cavaliers (42 points) standing as his best-scoring games in the NBA.
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