The Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA.

The Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA by Wayne Embry With Mary Schmitt Boyer The University of Akron Press, December 2004, $15.95, ISBN 1-931-96822-5

Wayne Embry's first book, The Inside Game: Race, Power, and Politics in the NBA is a stretch. But some readers, especially those addicted NBA fans, will enjoy the author's recollections of his NBA tenure. He talks about his friendship with Don Nelson, the coach of the Dallas Mavericks and how in the end, Nelson sunk a knife in his back. Race, power or politics?

Embry commits a turnover. He teases but never delivers. Written with Mary Schmitt Boyer, a sports reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the book recounts Embry's journey from a confused rookie out of Miami University (Ohio) in 1958, when he was drafted by the St. Louis Hawks, who didn't have any black players on their roster.

Embry writes about being immediately traded to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he and Sihugo Green were the only two black players on the team in the then 12-year-old, race-conscious National Basketball Association, where the quota rules regarding blacks were strictly followed.

Wayne Embry was a tough, blue-collar brute of a player who became a hardened veteran during his 11-year, five-time all-star career. He entered the league eight years after Earl Lloyd from West Virginia State College, and became "the first black" in 1950 to play in an NBA game with the Washington Capitals.

He writes about the day in 1972, three years after his playing career ended when he accepted the challenging offer from Wes Pavalon, then the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks to become the first African American general manager in sports history.

Although, Embry takes us on a tour of that tenure till the day he was fired, he refuses to take us behind the scenes of power and give us the real lowdown. He later takes a similar position with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he stayed for nine years before being released. He was devastated. Was it about race, politics or power? Readers seeking answers will have to seek out other sources.

Embry flirted but he never went deep. Was he concerned about upsetting the league's hierarchy? Why? Because Embry, soon to be 67 years of age, still has a passion for the game and yearns to return. He wonders why no one calls him when positions open up around the league for experienced executives.

He writes that he's on the outside looking in, seldom in contact with anyone in the league, feeling he was forced into retirement, which he feels is the equivalent of being fired. He notes NBA Commissioner David Stern advised him to retire.

He writes: "It is not the way I would have chosen to end my career in the NBA. I cannot convince anyone that retiring was not my idea. But every time a job opens up and I am not contacted, the point is driven home again."

Embry, with a wealth of knowledge, didn't take it to the hoop. The Inside Game: Race, Power and Politics will not upset anyone remotely connected with the NBA. Wayne Embry plays his own game of politics.

Howie Evans is the senior sports editor at the New York Amsterdam News and a former member of BET's Budweiser Sports Report.