Amid the pomp and circumstance of All-Star Weekend—now safely packed away in a box until next February in New York—there were all kinds of acknowledgements, awards and accolades handed out, but there was one significant anniversary that went virtually unnoticed.
Fifty years ago in a dingy dressing room in the Boston Garden, a group of players nervously sat refusing to take the court for the first nationally televised All-Star Game. They wouldn’t play, they said, until the NBA recognized their union, and when the league did, the victory formed the basis for the NBPA, the modern players’ association.
Though the NBPA was in the news this past weekend, it wasn’t to commemorate the event that basically created it. Instead, it came up in a protracted discussion about its still-to-be-named next executive director and the relationship it would enjoy with new NBA commissioner Adam Silver going forward.
But, in an interview with Raptors senior advisor Wayne Embry, I did get the chance to reflect on the events of Jan. 14, 1964.
Embry has pretty much seen and done it all. He’s been an NBA all star and champion, and he was North American pro sports’ first African American general manager. He was also one of those nervous players sitting in the Boston Garden locker room waiting to see whether the owners and then-commissioner J. Walter Kennedy would recognize their union and, crucially, allow them to establish a pension plan.
Getting to the Garden at all had been an ordeal for Embry. Poor weather wreaked havoc with his commercial flight from Cincinnati, forcing him to spend the night in Minneapolis before flying to Washington where he caught a train bound for Beantown. Arriving at 5 p.m. the night of the game, he was greeted by Tom Heinsohn and Bob Cousy, two of the driving forces behind the union movement, who let him in on the plan for the evening: No pay, no play. If the owners refused to recognize the union and its demand for a pension plan, the players wouldn’t take the court.
Later that night, with both teams convened in one locker room, Heinsohn and Cousy’s plan was put to a players’ vote.
“There was quite a bit of tension [in the locker room],” Embry recalls. “I wasn’t as secure as some of the superstars on the team. I was just happy to be an all star. Certainly I was not Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West or any of those guys.”
It was later revealed that players voted 18-2 in favour of not playing the game. One of the dissenters was Chamberlain.
As the scheduled tip-off time approached—and with the prospect of the first nationally televised All-Star Game going down in flames looking like more and more of a possibility—commissioner Kennedy repeatedly visited the locker room trying to coerce the players into taking the floor. A few of the owners, many of whom had been waiting in the hall, even entered the locker room to apply direct pressure to their employees.
The players held, though, and about five minutes before game time, Kennedy relented. Drenched in sweat the commissioner entered the locker room and, according to Embry, delivered the news in a single sentence: “Fellas, you’re going to get your pension.”
The East defeated the West 111-107 that night, with Embry notching 13 points and seven baords for the winning squad, but the far greater victory was the birth of the union. At that time, some players toiled for years with no post-retirement safety net after helping to build the league, and players’ per diems were eight dollars a day.
“They finally did what was right,” Embry says, smiling. “The league is better for it.”
There has, however, been a regrettable lack of recognition for that courageous group of all stars.
“You would think there would have been more of an effort to have a better acknowledgement at the All-Star Game,” Embry remarks.
Later in his basketball journey, after he shifted to the other side of the negotiating table, Embry would never forget what he went through to help establish the union, and that insight and experience gave him a certain amount of cache with players and agents.
“It worked to my advantage,” Embry admits. “I think the thing that helped me in my management career is that I have sensitivity toward the players. I think I could be a voice of reason to the players as well as ownership.”
February is Black History Month and the NBA is active in recognizing it and the contributions of trailblazers like Embry, but the players’ association missed a golden opportunity this past weekend. It is often said that sports reflect society. Here’s hoping at some point the current generation of NBA players take a moment to look back at that anxiety ridden locker room and find a way to honour a victory that’s still paying dividends today.
Paul Jones’s interview with Wayne Embry can be found in its entirety here.