Road to Duke
Before Tom Emma wore Duke blue, another Manhasset basketball legend wore every color they had. Jim Brown — the Jim Brown — had set the Long Island scoring record at Manhasset High School in the early 1950s, averaging 38 points per game while also dominating in football, lacrosse, baseball, and track. Two decades later, a 6-foot-2 guard from the same school broke Brown's scoring record.
Tom Emma was born on August 1, 1961, and grew up on Long Island's North Shore in the small, affluent village of Manhasset. He scored 1,983 points at Manhasset High School between 1975 and 1979, surpassing Brown's mark to become the all-time leading scorer in Nassau County — a record that would stand for more than a decade, until David Mascia of Lynbrook broke it in 1991.
Fritz Mueller, who coached at Manhasset from 1953 to 1982, had seen them all. He remembered Emma not for the scoring records but for the person. "Tom was just a very polite young man," Mueller said. "Never had a bad word to say about anybody. And just loved basketball. He just enjoyed being around everybody. Never a curse word. Never hollered at anybody. Just went about his business. They enjoyed playing with him. Just a fine, fine, fine young man."
The scoring record, Mueller noted, never went to Emma's head. "The fact he became the scoring leader in Nassau County really never affected him at all. He never thought in that light. He just played each game as they went. He was just a prolific scorer. With the three-point line, he would have been even better."
Emma was a two-time New York State Sportswriters Association first-team All-Star and committed to Duke under head coach Bill Foster, whose 1978 Blue Devils had reached the national championship game behind Gene Banks, Mike Gminski, and Jim Spanarkel. Emma arrived in Durham for the 1979-80 season and played on an ACC championship team that reached the Elite Eight — the last team Bill Foster would ever coach at Duke.
At Duke
Everything changed in the fall of 1980. Foster left for South Carolina. Duke athletic director Tom Butters went to West Point and hired an unknown 33-year-old Army coach named Mike Krzyzewski. On November 29, 1980 — Ronald Reagan had just been elected, Kenny Rogers's "Lady" topped the charts, and there was no shot clock, no three-point line — Krzyzewski walked into Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time as head coach.
The opponent was Stetson. Duke's first possession under the new coach was a turnover. Gene Banks scored the first point — a free throw. Then Tom Emma, a sophomore starting at guard, got loose on the fast break and scored the first field goal of the Krzyzewski era. He finished with 19 points on 6-of-9 shooting and a perfect 7-for-7 from the foul line. Duke won 67-49. Krzyzewski called it "a good opener" and noted that they would need to fill out the roster in the years to come. He had no idea.
That 1980-81 team went 17-13, respectable enough given the coaching transition. Banks, Kenny Dennard, and Vince Taylor were the stars. Emma was the shooting guard, a capable replacement for the departed Bob Bender — not flashy, not the primary option, but a player who could shoot, defend, and keep the floor organized. Duke Basketball Report described him as "more of a shooting guard than a point guard but a capable, acceptable replacement for Bender."
Then the bottom dropped out. In 1981-82, Duke went 10-17 — the only losing season Krzyzewski would ever have. In 1982-83, Emma's senior year, Duke went 11-17. The Godfather Class of freshmen — Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas, David Henderson — had arrived with enormous expectations as the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the country. Emma was a senior starter whose role was expected to shrink.
There could have been resentment. There wasn't. Jay Bilas, who would go on to become one of the most prominent voices in college basketball, never forgot what Emma did for that freshman class. "He was one of the first two players I met on my official visit to Duke, and he was one of my hosts," Bilas wrote in a tribute for ESPN years later. "He was a senior captain of the Duke basketball team my freshman year. He was like a big brother to me."
Emma and fellow senior Chip Engelland became mentors to the overwhelmed freshmen. But Emma couldn't just be the wise older brother. He had to get something out of it too — and usually, that was a laugh.
Before the freshmen's first practice, Emma pulled them aside with a straight face. He told them that one of the players on the team had a skin condition that could be transmitted through sharing soap in the showers. He quietly advised them to bring their own bars of soap to be safe. The next day, every freshman showed up to the locker room carrying an identical plastic soap case with the Duke logo on it — purchased at the student union. The entire team was there waiting, laughing. Emma was in the back, giggling.
"Of course, there was no disease," Bilas wrote, "and one would be hard pressed to imagine any disease transmitted by soap. But we all fell for it anyway. Even today, it is difficult for me to pass a locker room shower without thinking about Tom's 'safety in the shower' speech."
Midway through that brutal 1982-83 season, with losses piling up and practices growing more intense, Emma gathered the team beforehand. His experience told him what was coming: a hellacious practice, the kind where a fight could break out. He told the freshmen to play their tails off but keep cool. Don't let anything get out of control. Don't start swinging.
Practice was brutal. A fight broke out. And Emma was right in the middle of it, throwing haymakers. When Bilas needled him afterward about the speech, Emma shrugged. "I was talking about you guys hitting me, not me hitting you."
On the court, Emma competed. He averaged 8.3 points, 2.9 assists, and 2.1 rebounds as a senior. He finished his career with 110 games played, 71 starts, and a .843 career free throw percentage that still ranks among the best in Duke history. In the final game against N.C. State that senior year, he hit five three-point field goals for 19 points at Reynolds Coliseum — tying his career high from that first Stetson game three years earlier, the night the Krzyzewski era began.
Bilas captured what made Emma irreplaceable: "Tom was very engaging and funny, and had a really good feel for people. He wasn't shy, but he also didn't insert himself into just any situation. He picked his spots." In airports, Emma would page his teammates over the intercom, always with something embarrassing. If you said something stupid, Emma had the needle ready. But he did it in a way that had everyone laughing together.
Emma was named team captain as a senior. The Chicago Bulls drafted him in the 10th round of the 1983 NBA Draft — the 210th overall pick. He never played a regular-season game in the NBA.
After Duke
After Duke, Emma earned a master's degree from Columbia University. He worked on Wall Street in New York City, then founded Power Performance, Inc., a company specializing in training athletes in strength, conditioning, and athletic enhancement.
Emma channeled his basketball mind into the science of performance. He wrote multiple books — "A Basketball Player's Comprehensive Guide to Strength Training," "Training for Peak Performance Basketball," "101 Strength and Conditioning Exercises and Drills for Basketball," and peak conditioning volumes for volleyball and other sports. His books earned endorsements from Chip Engelland — his old Duke teammate, by then an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs — and from Bilas himself.
When Emma called Bilas to ask for a book endorsement, he was typically self-deprecating about it. He told Bilas he'd been meaning to ask for a while but didn't want to bother him. Bilas was incredulous and told Emma he could always call. Emma's response was pure Emma: "OK, I was busy calling people more famous, but they turned me down. You were just the next one on my list."
Emma also served as head basketball coach at the New York Athletic Club, where his teams won two national club championships under the guidance of coach Milton Lee, who called Emma's conditioning work among the best he'd seen.
Where Is He Now
On June 7, 2011, Tom Emma died at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South. He was 49 years old.
Jay Bilas got the phone call that evening while waiting for a ride to the airport. A reporter was asking for comment. Bilas didn't know. He felt, he wrote later, like he had been punched in the stomach.
"I had known him for almost 30 years," Bilas wrote for ESPN. "How do you describe what a person means to you in a quick and useable quote?"
Bilas called his old teammates, ostensibly to make sure they knew, but really just to hear their voices. Coach Krzyzewski released a statement: "The Duke basketball family is deeply saddened to hear of the tragic passing of Tom Emma."
Tom Emma led Duke in scoring in the first game Mike Krzyzewski ever coached. He held together a locker room through the two worst seasons Duke would ever have. He made freshmen buy soap. He threw haymakers after telling everyone to stay calm. He broke Jim Brown's scoring record at Manhasset and never once thought it was a big deal. He earned a master's from Columbia, built a business training athletes, wrote books that coaches still use, and called Jay Bilas last on the endorsement list because he didn't want to be a bother.
Bilas, who has spent decades finding the right words for a living, couldn't find them for Tom Emma. He tried. He came as close as anyone could.
"I can't adequately put Tom Emma into words, not in an interview and not in an article. Tom Emma was my teammate and my friend. I was lucky to know him and have him in my life."
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