Once more this week, the basketball world will turn its eyes to Michael Jordan, looking at one of sports’ all-time greats with fresh eyes.
The Chicago Bulls icon has proven again that he can hold everyone’s attention, even if the story is more than 20 years old, and everyone knows how it ends.
‘The Last Dance’ – the 10-part documentary that began last weekend and will show parts three and four on Sunday night in the US and Monday in Canada on Netflix – seemed to draw in everyone with even a passing interest in the NBA and its most towering star.
And given the lack of options for sports entertainment during five weeks the behind-the-scenes documentary of the last of the Bulls six championships plays out, it likely won’t change.
An exception to the rule was Wayne Embry, the Toronto Raptors executive who is self-isolating with his wife Terri and their two daughters in Dayton, Ohio.
“I did not watch,” said Embry earlier this week. “I’m staying with my daughters and the family was watching something else, so I wanted to be a family man and watch what they were watching. I’ll have to catch up on it.”
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Of course, the 83-year-old Hall of Famer had a front-row seat when Jordan’s show played live and it never ended the way Embry would have liked.
So, you can excuse him if doesn’t want to revel in the good old days.
Part of the Jordan myth is how he crushed all foes without favour or exception. Some of the greatest players and teams the NBA has ever known played out their Hall of Fame careers without having a championship to show for it – Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks, Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers, Karl Malone and John Stockton with the Utah Jazz and Gary Payton with the Seattle Supersonics.
Embry saw it all coming. In the 1980s in Cleveland, Embry, who won an NBA title as a player with the Boston Celtics and as an executive with the Milwaukee Bucks and a third with the Raptors in 2019, had put together an excellent NBA team that Jordan just happened to smother nearly every Spring.
The documentary has provided a forum or an excuse to relive countless Jordan moments, Embry lived some of them. The pain still haunts him.
In 1988-89 the Bulls weren’t quite the Bulls, having only won a single playoff series (against Cleveland in 1987-88) and yet to make even the Eastern Conference Finals.
But Jordan was most definitely Jordan as he was completing arguably his best individual season, averaging 32.5 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, along with 2.9 steals while shooting 53.8 per cent for the floor.
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But Embry’s Cavs were a special team. Anchored by Mark Price at point guard and Brad Daugherty at centre – two Hall of Fame talents whose careers were stunted by injuries – they were deep and just coming into their own.
Coming off a 57-win campaign they were the favourites against the 47-win Bulls whom Cleveland had beat six straight times in the regular season.
But Price missed Game 1 of the five-game first-round series with a groin injury and their talented wing Craig Ehlo missed Game 3 with an ankle sprain, with Cleveland losing both games.
The Cavs entered a deciding Game 5 on their home court with their season in the balance.
Embry remembers how it unfolded like it happened last weekend.
The lead changed hands three times in six seconds, with Jordan (on his way to putting up 44 points, nine rebounds and six assists) hitting a jumper to put the Bulls up one; Ehlo scoring a lay-up off an inbounds to give the Cavs a one-point lead with three seconds left.
It set the stage for The Shot – one of a short list of series-winning shots, including Jordan’s Game 6 winner in the NBA Finals to conclude ‘The Last Dance’ and Kawhi Leonard’s series-winner against the Philadelphia 76ers for the Raptors last season.
“I used to stay in the tunnel for our home games, and when Ehlo went in for the lay-up to put us up … everyone was all cheering,” says Embry. “I was stoically watching what was happening on the court and people were like ‘Wayne aren’t you excited? We’re going to win, we’re going to win!’
“I said ‘calm down, he’s going to get one more shot’ and sure enough, the damn thing rattled and went in.
“My heart dropped.”
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Embry’s Cavs would end up losing seven playoff series to Jordan’s Bulls, including the Eastern Conference Finals in 1992.
It was a swath of dominance that played out over a decade and a complete roster makeover.
Embry won the NBA executive-of-the-year award in 1992 in putting together what was probably his best team in Cleveland and again in 1998 for a revamped roster built around a promising Zydrunas Ilgauskas.
The Bulls just won titles.
“I thought we a better team, one-through-12, a couple of those times, but they had greatness on their side,” says Embry. “… We had to overcome Michael and we couldn’t get it done.”
Embry is an expert on the subject of greatness and overcoming.
As a player, he teamed with Oscar Robertson on the Cincinnati Royals and was a five-time all-star, but never tasted champagne because Cincinnati couldn’t find a way past Bill Russell and the Celtics or Wilt Chamberlain and the 76ers.
As an executive in Cleveland, it was Jordan, and then for several years with the Toronto, it was another No. 23 – LeBron James in his second tour with the Cavs — that stymied the Raptors.
But Embry is used to overcoming things. He’s fond of saying the keys to success lie in words that begin with ‘P’ – pride, perceptions, passion, preparation, persistence and perseverance.
For decades it was a philosophy that helped him withstand racial prejudice and injustice. Growing up in rural Ohio, he recalls having gun shots fired at his home in the 1940s and 1950s and death threats against him fifty years later.
In between it was making his way in an NBA that had an unofficial quota for black players on rosters and setting the standard as a pioneering basketball executive.
Now he’s dealing with an ailing wife and trying to stay safe during a pandemic that has disproportionately targeted the elderly.
“This is unbelievable,” says Embry, who is using his downtime to put miles in on his recumbent bike and make calls from his contact list of legends – Sam Jones, Robertson, Russell, Jerry Colangelo, Rod Thorn and others.
“My heart goes out to those people and their families that are being infected by this. Polio [the deadly virus that peaked in the 1950s before being tamed by a vaccine discovered Jonas Salk] was bad, but this is unbelievable.”
‘The Last Dance?’ Embry says he’ll get around to it.
Then again, he’s seen it before and despite being on the receiving end of some of Jordan’s most ferocious gut punches, he remains a champion by any measure.
