Embry was elected to Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 as a contributor

All quotes come from Wayne Embry’s autobiography THE INSIDE GAME: RACE POWER AND POLITICS IN THE NBA Please don’t sue me.

Bob Lanier was an imposing man: 6’11” and 260 lbs that bullied other grown men around all the time. But right now he was staring at the ground like a scolded child as the full frame of Wayne Embry towered over him. Embry was a former center in the league and the first African American general manager in the league. He had just lectured Lanier to ensure that Lanier would cause no problems once the Bucks acquired him.

Mr. Fitzgerald is the owner, we don’t need you to be the owner. Nellie is the coach, and he’s a pretty good one. We don’t need you to coach. I am the vice president and I help in personnel decisions. We don’t need you to do that, either. We need you to come and play basketball to the best of your ability and bring veteran leadership to a talented team of quality people.

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After the 1967 Milwaukee riots, original Bucks owner Wesley Pavalon took to wearing dashikis and flashing the black power sign. He was friends with Roots author Alex Haley and Arthur Ashe. Before the start of the Bucks lone championship season, he went to a tennis tournament outside of Boston to watch his friend Ashe. His trip doubled as a recruiting mission. He was looking to hire Boston’s current Director of Recreation Wayne Embry as the Bucks’ Assistant to the President. Read more…

Overdoing anything makes it less special.  I don’t care if we’re talking about driving go-carts, going to the circus, jumping rope, eating ice cream or playing video games.  If you do it every day, it’ll become less special.  Let’s say after dinner every night you eat a big bowl of vanilla ice cream.  The first time you have that ice cream, you’re going to be ecstatic, almost nothing is better after a meal than some creamy, cold, delicious vanilla ice cream.  The next day, you’re going to enjoy that ice cream almost as much, but it’s no longer quite the same.  The next week?  You’re still loving your ice cream, but now you’re used to it.  You’ve become accustomed to this treat and it simply cannot be as special as it once was.  And let’s assume you have kids and they’re eating this ice cream too.  Now you’re children are growing up without really recognizing how much of a treat it is to get ice cream after dinner.  They think it’s just part of the dinner process and lack to ability to decipher what’s special from what is to be expected.

That’s why I have never understood the Bob Lanier thing. Read more…