America mourns the death of basketball legend and civil rights activist Bill Russell
Bill Russell redefined how basketball is played, and then he changed the way the sport was viewed in a racially divided country.
Key points:
- Bill Russell is a 12-time All-Star and was voted the greatest player in history in 1980
- He won 11 championships as the core of the dominant Boston Celtics team
- MVP award for best player of the NBA finals series named after him
The most prolific winner in NBA history, Russell marched with Martin Luther King Jr, endorsed Muhammad Ali and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
The heart of the Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 championships in 13 years, Russell won his last two NBA titles as a player-coach—the first black coach in a major US sport.
Russell died on Sunday at the age of 88. His family posted the news on social media, saying his wife Jeannine was by his side. The statement did not provide a cause of death, but Russell was not well enough to present the NBA Finals MVP trophy in June due to a long illness.
“Bill’s wife Jeannine and many of his friends and family, thank you for keeping Bill in your prayers. Perhaps you will remember a golden moment or two he gave us, or remember his trademark laugh when he enjoyed telling the true story at reverse how those moments unfolded,” the family statement said.
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“And we hope that each of us can find a new way to act or speak with Bill’s uncompromising, dignified and always constructive commitment to principle.
“It will be the last, and everlasting, victory for our beloved #6.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement that Russell was “the greatest champion in all of team sports.”
“Bill stood for something much bigger than sport: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he stamped into our league’s DNA. At the height of his athletic career, Bill advocated passionately for civil rights and social justice, a the legacy he passed down to generations of NBA players who followed in his footsteps,” Silver said.
“Through ridicule, threats, and unthinkable hardship, Bill rose above all else and remained true to his belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity.”
A five-time Hall of Famer, Most Valuable Player and 12-time All-Star, Russell was in 1980 voted the greatest player in NBA history by basketball writers.
He remains the sport’s most decorated champion – he also won two college titles and an Olympic gold medal – and the archetypal selflessness that wins on defense and rebounds while the others rack up striking scoring totals.
Often, that meant Wilt Chamberlain—the only worthy rival of the Russell era and his primary competition for rebounds, MVP trophies, and barroom arguments over who was better. Chamberlain, who died in 1999 at the age of 63, has twice as many points, four MVP trophies of his own and is the only person in league history to have had more rebounds than Russell — 23,924 to 21,620.
But Russell dominates in the only stat he cares about: 11 championships to two.
The Louisiana native also left a lasting mark as a black athlete in a city – and country – where race is often a flashpoint.
He was at the March on Washington in 1963, when King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, and he supported Muhammad Ali when the boxer was humiliated for refusing induction into the military.
“To be the greatest champion in your sport, to revolutionize the way the game is played, and to be a community leader all at once seems unthinkable, but that’s Bill Russell,” the Boston Celtics said in a statement.
In 2011, Obama shared the Russell Medal of Freedom with Congressman John Lewis, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel and baseball great Stan Musial.
“Bill Russell, that man, was someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all people,” Obama said at the ceremony.
“He lined up with King; he stood next to Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the Black Celtics, he refused to play in a scheduled game. He suffered humiliation and vandalism, but he continued to focus on turning the team-mates he loved into players. a better one, and allow the success of so many to follow.”
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Russell says that when he grew up in the secluded southern region and later California, his parents instilled in him a calm self-confidence that allowed him to shake off racist ridicule.
“Years later, people ask me what I had to go through,” Russell said in 2008.
“Unfortunately, or fortunately, I never experienced anything. From the first moment I lived, I felt that my mother and father loved me.”
It was Russell’s mother who would tell him to ignore comments from people who might see him playing on the lawn.
“Whatever they said, good or bad, they didn’t know you,” he recalls.
“They are wrestling with their own demons.”
But it was Jackie Robinson who gave Russell a roadmap for tackling racism in his sport: “Jackie was a hero to us. He always behaved like a man. He showed me how to be a man in professional sports.”
The feelings were mutual, Russell learned, when Robinson’s widow, Rachel, called and asked him to be the pallbearer at her husband’s funeral in 1972.
“He hung up the phone and I asked myself, ‘How can you be a hero to Jackie Robinson?'” Russell said. “I’m very flattered.”
William Felton Russell was born on February 12, 1934, in Monroe, Louisiana.
He was a child when his family moved to the West Coast, and he went to high school in Oakland, California, and then the University of San Francisco. He led the Don to the NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956 and won the gold medal in 1956 at the Melbourne Olympics.
Celtics coach and general manager Red Auerbach coveted Russell so much that he teamed up with the St Louis Hawks to pick second in the draft. He promised the Rochester Royals, who had the number one pick, a lucrative visit by Ice Capades, who were also run by Celtics owner Walter Brown.
Still, Russell arrived in Boston to complain that he wasn’t that good.
“People said it was a wasted draft choice, a waste of money,” he recalls.
“They said, ‘He’s not good. All he can do is block shots and rebounds.’ And Red said, ‘Enough.'”
The Celtics also took on Tommy Heinsohn and KC Jones, Russell’s college teammates, in the same draft. Although Russell joined the team late as he led the US to Olympic gold, Boston finished the regular season with the league’s best record.
The Celtics won the NBA championship—the first of 17—in the seventh game of double extra-time against Bob Pettit’s St Louis Hawks. Russell won his first MVP award the following season, but the Hawks won the title in the final rematch. The Celtics won it all again in 1959, starting an unprecedented streak of eight consecutive NBA crowns.
A 6-foot-10 center, Russell has never averaged more than 18.9 points over 13 seasons, each year averaging more rebounds per game than points. Over the course of 10 seasons he averaged over 20 rebounds. He’s had 51 rebounds in a game; Chamberlain holds the record with 55.
Auerbach retired after winning the 1966 title, and Russell became player-coach—the first black head coach in NBA history, and nearly a decade before Frank Robinson took over Cleveland Indians baseball. Boston finished with the second-best regular season record in the NBA, and its title streak ended with losses to Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Division finals.
Russell led the Celtics back to the title in 1968 and ’69, each time winning a seven-game play-off series against Chamberlain. Russell retired after the ’69 finals, returning for a relatively successful—but unsatisfactory—four-year stint as coach and GM of the Seattle SuperSonics and a less than fruitful half season as coach of the Sacramento Kings.
Russell’s number six jersey was retired by the Celtics in 1972. He earned a place on the NBA’s all-time 25th anniversary team in 1970, the 35th anniversary team in 1980 and the 75th anniversary team. In 1996, he was hailed as one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players.
In 2009, the NBA Finals MVP trophy was named in his honor—though Russell never won it himself, as it wasn’t awarded for the first time until 1969. Russell, however, has traditionally presented the trophy over the years, the last time in 2019 being to Kawhi Leonard; Russell wasn’t there in 2020 because of the NBA bubble or in 2021 because of COVID-19 concerns.
In 2013, a statue was unveiled in Boston’s City Hall Plaza of Russell surrounded by granite blocks with quotes about leadership and character. Russell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975 but did not attend the ceremony, saying he should not have been the first African-American elected. (Chuck Cooper, the NBA’s first black player, was his pick.)
In 2019, Russell received his Hall of Fame ring in a private meeting.
“I feel others before me should have had that honor,” he tweeted. “It’s good to see progress.”
Silver said he “often calls on (Russell) basketball Babe Ruth for how he transcends time.”
“Bill was a major winner and the perfect teammate, and his influence on the NBA will be felt forever,” Silver added. “We extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Jeannine, her family and many of her friends.”
Russell’s family said arrangements for the memorial service would be announced in the coming days.
AP
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