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A look back at Bill Russell’s remarkable life
Bill Russell, the Hall of Fame basketball player, consummate winner and eloquent advocate for racial equality, died Sunday at 88. Here’s a look at a life journey that began in Louisiana and took him to glory in the Olympics and NBA — and to a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his leadership off the court.
1. 1934: Bill Russell is born in Louisiana
Charles and Katie Russell welcome William Felton Russell on Feb. 12 in Monroe, a town in north Louisiana. When Russell is 9, his family moves to Oakland, Calif., and lives in the city’s public housing projects.
2. 1952-1956: The USF years
Russell tours with a California high school all-star team in 1952 and then enters the University of San Francisco, a small Jesuit school, on a basketball scholarship, the only offer he received.
With Russell, the Dons start winning … and winning … and winning, running off a streak of 55 straight victories and two national championships. Russell is named the NCAA tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in 1955 and is a two-time all-American.
3. 1956: Olympic success and the NBA follow
Russell is a member of the United States’ gold medal-winning team at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
He is a first-round pick, second overall, by the St. Louis Hawks in the 1956 NBA draft, but the Hawks eye Celtics center Ed Macauley and forward Cliff Hagan, who had not yet played for Boston because of his military service. Red Auerbach, the Celtics’ coach and mastermind, covets Russell for his defensive ability. Auerbach agrees to a trade and acquires the draft rights to Russell.
The Celtics weren’t finished. In that draft, the team also gets K.C. Jones (Russell’s USF teammate) and Tommy Heinsohn; all three end up in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
4. 1956-1969: The Celtics’ luck takes a turn
Because he played in the Summer Olympics, Russell could not sign with the Celtics until December, and his first game is Dec. 22, 1956, against the Hawks. The Celtics had never won an NBA championship, and he silences critics with defensive play that brings the team an NBA title in his first season. (When he breaks his ankle the following year, the Celtics lose in the championship series.)
Starting in 1959, the Celtics win eight straight championships, something no team has come close to doing since. In 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1965, Russell is the league’s MVP. During 13 seasons with the Celtics, the team advances to the Finals 12 times, winning 11 championships.
Russell was regarded by many as the NBA’s greatest player until the arrival of Michael Jordan, but his forte was defense. He finished with 21,620 rebounds and led the league in rebounding four times. He had 51 rebounds in one game and 49 in two others and posted 12 straight seasons with 1,400 or more rebounds. Although he never averaged as many as 19 points in a season, he scored at a 15.1-point clip, with 4.3 assists per game, over for his career.
5. 1958 through the 1960s: A thoughtful activist emerges
Related video: Celtics great Bill Russell, 11-time NBA champion, dead at 88 (Reuters)
Despite the championships, Russell wasn’t always regarded with affection and respect, particularly in Boston, with its history of racism. He had an unorthodox style for a superstar, preferring to shake hands and speak with fans rather than sign autographs. In his 1979 book “Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man,” he referred to Boston as a “flea market of racism.”
In 1958, he begins speaking out about injustice, accusing the league of using a quota system to limit the number of Black players on each team. He marches with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. but questions the emphasis on nonviolence, saying African Americans have the right to defend themselves.
Russell attends the March on Washington in 1963, when King gives his “I Have a Dream” speech, and he supports Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the military.
After the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 in Jackson, Miss., Russell runs a youth basketball camp in the city to unite White and Black children. He receives death threats but does not back down.
6. 1959: A rivalry is born
Russell’s close friend Wilt Chamberlain enters the league and the fun begins, with Chamberlain compiling gaudy offensive statistics but playing on only one NBA championship team (the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers) during Russell’s years with the Celtics. “If he got 62 [points] and we won, that wouldn’t mean anything,” Russell tells Bob Costas in 1997. “But if he got 62 and won the game, that bothered me.”
7. 1966: Another first
Auerbach retires in 1966, and Russell, while still playing, becomes the first Black head coach in U.S. major pro sports history.
8. 1969: One career ends, others begin
Russell retires and settles in Mercer Island, Wash. He works at times on telecasts of NBA games and even does some acting. Then he answers the call of the Seattle SuperSonics, becoming their coach and general manager from 1973 to 1977. He coaches the Sacramento Kings in 1987 and is vice president of the team’s basketball operations until 1989.
9. 1972 and 1975: Refusing accolades (for a while)
Against his will, Russell’s number is retired by the Celtics and he refuses to attend the ceremony. He also refuses to attend his induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975 as a protest that he would be the first African American player to be enshrined.
However, in 1999 he returns to Boston for a ceremony in which his No. 6 was “re-retired.”
A statue of Russell is unveiled in City Hall Plaza in 2013, something Russell agrees to in exchange for a promise by city officials to fund a program to mentor youth. It’s inscribed with a quote that captures how he played: “The most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”
10. 2009: A big award gets the Russell imprint
The award given to the MVP of the NBA Finals, something Russell never won, is named the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award. “This is one of my proudest moments in basketball,” he says, “because I determined early in my career the only important statistic in basketball is the final score.”
11. 2010: The Medal of Freedom
He is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by Barack Obama for his athletic accomplishments and his advocacy for human rights.
12. July 31, 2022: A storied life ends
Russell, called by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver “the greatest champion in all of team sports,” dies at 88.
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