Tom Emma, the captain of the 1983 Duke men’s basketball team, died on Tuesday morning after jumping off the roof of the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan.
New York police recovered Emma’s body just before 11:30 a.m. on a second-floor landing of the Jumeirah Essex House next door. Emma, 49, did not leave a suicide note but police said relatives told them that Emma had been depressed.
“The Duke basketball family is deeply saddened to hear of the tragic passing of Tom Emma,” head coach Mike Krzyzewski said in a statement. “He was a good man and fine representative of Duke University. Our hearts go out to his family and friends. He will be missed.”
The 6-foot-2, 185-pound guard played four years for the Blue Devils, averaging 8.3 points and 2.9 assists per game in his senior season. He was drafted 210th overall by the Chicago Bulls in 1983 but never played in an NBA game.
“I can’t believe it,” Johnny Dawkins, head basketball coach at Stanford, and Emma’s former teammate, told the New York Daily News on Tuesday.
“He was a great guy,” Dawkins said. “I have nothing but respect for him as a competitor. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”
Emma was one of most highly-regarded high school basketball players to ever come out of Long Island. He attended Manhasset (N.Y.) High, where he broke the school scoring record with 1,983 points, eclipsing the mark set years earlier by Hall of Fame football player Jim Brown.
Bill Foster was Duke’s head coach when Emma arrived in 1980, though he left shortly after the Blue Devils advanced to the Elite 8 that season. Duke advanced to the NIT in new coach Mike Krzyzewski’s first campaign, but struggled to sub-.500 seasons in Emma’s junior and senior years.
Emma graduated from Duke with a dual degree in history and economics before earning a master’s degree in real estate and development from Columbia.
He had been working since 1991 as the founder and president of Power Performance, Inc., a company dedicated to helping young athletes achieve their strength and conditioning goals. He also wrote a series of books about athletic training, including “A Basketball Player’s Comprehensive Guide to Strength Training” and “The Ultimate Shooter’s Improvement Handbook.”
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