Embry had seen it all, but then came COVID
RAPTORS EXECUTIVE, 83, STILL ENJOYS RICH, FULL LIFE
Wayne Embry is a walking, talking world book encyclopedia, having made his own history and lived through almost all that has mattered the past 83 years.
He can still see his uncles, Woody and Louis, walking up the driveway in Ohio, coming home safely at the end of the Second World War. “I thought about that just the other day,” said Embry in a wide- ranging telephone conversation. “What a glorious day that was. We were so proud and so happy. And we had a big celebration on the hill when they got home.
“I guess, when you’re home now and being safe, and there’s lots of time, you have lots of time to think about all kinds of things.”
He’s home now, like all of us; home and safe in his daughter’s house just outside of Dayton. There are no basketball games being played. There is only so much television and so much news you can watch. There is the occasional contact with Toronto Raptors brass Masai Ujiri or Bobby Webster or Larry Tanenbaum. “They keep me informed,” the team’s senior basketball adviser said.
Embry has lived through the Second World War, Korea, the polio epidemic, Vietnam, the civil rights movement and, of course, his own pioneer ways as the first African- American general manager in the NBA. But nothing, he said, like the coronavirus. Nothing that has brought the world to its knees like this has.
“I don’t think we’ve lived through anything comparable,” said Embry, who has lived through almost everything. “When I was much younger, the polio epidemic was pretty bad ( late 1940s, early 1950s). And then the vaccine came in ( around 1952) and that levelled off after that. We’re kind of hoping for that now.
“The wars, they were horrible. The civil rights movement was a big fight. But there’s nothing comparable to this (virus). This is unbelievable. And we don’t really know where we are with it. This is awful.”
Back in 1965, when Embry was playing for the Cincinnati Royals and rooming with the great Oscar Robertson, he got a call from his wife, Terri, with somewhat disturbing news. Terri had decided to be part of the now- famous civil rights march on Selma, Ala. She told him that Robertson’s wife, Yvonne, was going to march with her. She told him not to tell Oscar — to let Yvonne tell him personally.
“I asked her not to go,” Embry said. “I said ‘ you’ve got kids’ at home. You’re not going, Terri.’ She said she was going and not to tell Oscar.”
A minute later, the phone in the hotel room rang again. It was Yvonne on the line. “We were really upset about it,” Embry said “We understood why. Terri told me she was doing something that she wanted to do and had to do. She said it was no big deal for us, but it was a tremendous big deal. We were very upset until they got home.”
That was well into Embry’s career in Cincinnati. When he first arrived as a rookie in the NBA, he was the only African- American on the team. He couldn’t eat in the restaurants the team ate in. He couldn’t sleep in the same hotels. He was as isolated as you can be without self isolation.
“My teammates were really supportive,” Embry said, knowing he almost didn’t make it to the NBA. “That got me through it.”
Before he was drafted to play basketball, he thought he was headed to the Marines and Vietnam.
He went with a friend to sign up to fight for his country. “We were standing in line and I got a tap on my shoulder. The guy said to me ‘We can’t take you.’”
Embry stepped out of the line and asked why.
“You’re too tall,” he was told. “We’d never find boots for your size-17 feet.”
Embry did get to Vietnam. But it was years later, on a public relations visiting tour. His life has been full of experiences, traumatic and triumphant. When Embry came out of retirement to play two seasons with the Boston Celtics, he wound up being hired as the head of recreation for the City of Boston. He was also doing some work for the soft drink companies, first Coca- Cola, then Pepsi- Cola. He figured that was his future. He didn’t envision 50 or so more years in the NBA.
He was first hired by the
Milwaukee Bucks as assistant to the president and a year later, in 1972, he was called to a meeting with ownership. “I thought I was going to be fired,” said Embry. “They said, ‘ you’re the new general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks.’
“I sat there dumbfounded, I don’t know for how long. I didn’t think it was a possible.”
The first African- American general manager in North American professional sports. He didn’t realize what he was headed for.
“I got letters, hate mail, all of that. My focus was not on being African-american. My focus was on doing the job. I thought my hiring was only significant if others followed me. I had a job to do and had to do it well. It wasn’t what Jackie Robinson went through. It wasn’t anything like that at all.”
Embry wound up as general manager in Milwaukee and later Cleveland more than 20 years. He loves his current role with the Raptors. He’s still involved after all these years, and like a lot of us, is in love with this current edition of the team, coming off an NBA championship and then without Kawhi Leonard exceeding expectations in a season that may not come to conclusion.
His health is good. His wife is still struggling from a seizure she suffered last year. Both are socially distancing, unsure of what might be next.
But basketball has been his life, really is his life, now into his 10th decade. “I’m going fine,” Embry said, quoting his doctors. “They tell me to keep doing what I’ve been doing.”
THERE’S NOTHING COMPARABLE TO THIS. THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE.