Ex-Celt Wayne Embry thinks ‘sports … can be a model for … society’

Former Boston Celtic champion big man Wayne Embry believes resuming the NBA season well let the league function as a model for society.

At least one former Boston Celtic who lived through another era of considerable civil unrest related his thoughts on whether the NBA should be playing in light of a similar climate arising in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of a white police officer, has sparked global demonstrations against police violence and systemic racism after his death, leaving many players wondering if it would be a distraction for the NBA to resume under such circumstances.

Former Celtic Wayne Embry believes they should.

Now a senior advisor with the Toronto Raptors, Embry had been a big man playing for Boston at the time when Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

The killing came just ahead of the Celtics Game 1 of the 1968 East Division Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers.

“Our immediate reaction was we will not play the game,” said Embry in a recent interview with the CBC’s Lori Ewing. “Players were just shaken, all the emotions you can probably think of. We just thought ‘We will not play the game.'”

Team president Red Auerbach believed the game would help keep people off the streets, and went ahead anyway.

“So, of course we had to go out compete, but in the back of our minds, the Sixers and Celtics players shared grief and were visibly upset and disturbed about what had happened. But we still went out and played,” related Embry.

And Red’s concern of what might happen was shared by others, according to the Raptors advisor — it permeated the very air; “you could tell there was a difference, people were afraid of what might happen, you could sense it, you could just feel it.”

Those experiences helped shape his view today, which disappoints him greatly as he sees race relations in the US as having taken a considerable step backwards in recent years.

“I am saddened, angered, and quite frankly terrified by the way things are, and this is how many years later?” Embry explained. “We thought things were well, and things got well in the late 70s and early 80s, we started to see progress, corporate America opened up, I think we saw great progress.”

“And I think it continued on into the 90s, but in recent years, it’s just amazing, somehow we’ve regressed. It’s sad to see,” he added.

On hearing anew a call for a boycott in favor of focusing on the civil unrest and causal factors behind it, Embry does not agree.

“I would play because I think through sports we can be a model for the greater society in that we come from diverse backgrounds, we come together to work toward a common goal and that’s to win the championship in a team sport,” he related. “I think we can be a model for the greater society, so that’s why I think I would play.”

This echoes similar sentiments, such as that offered by Houston Rockets guard Austin Rivers — son of former Boston coach Doc — who believes playing only expands the platform many players are using to further awareness of and action towards solving racial injustice in the U.S.

There is no right answer when it comes to socially-constructed consenses on such fraught issues, only answers which make more or less sense to the masses who ought to have a say in them.

But it is worth at least listening to those who have walked this path before, given how hard that journey has been.

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