Bill Russell, Boston Celtics legend and 11-time NBA champion, dies at 88

Invoice Russell, the cornerstone of the Boston Celtics’ dynasty that received eight straight titles and 11 general throughout his profession, died Sunday. The Corridor of Famer was 88.

Over a 15-year interval, starting together with his junior 12 months on the College of San Francisco, Russell had essentially the most outstanding profession of any participant within the historical past of workforce sports activities. At USF, he was a two time All-American, received two straight NCAA championships and led the workforce to 55 consecutive wins. And he received a gold medal on the 1956 Olympics.

Throughout his 13 years in Boston, he carried the Celtics to the NBA Finals 12 occasions, successful the championship 11 occasions. The one 12 months the Celtics misplaced, in 1958 to the St. Louis Hawks, the collection was tied 2-2 when Russell acquired damage and was hospitalized. The Celtics misplaced the subsequent two video games by a complete of three factors.

A five-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, Russell was an uncanny shot blocker who revolutionized NBA defensive ideas. He completed with 21,620 profession rebounds — a mean of twenty-two.5 per recreation — and led the league in rebounding 4 occasions. He had 51 rebounds in a single recreation, 49 in two others and 12 straight seasons of 1,000 or extra rebounds. Russell additionally averaged 15.1 factors and 4.3 assists per recreation over his profession.

Till Michael Jordan’s exploits within the Nineties, Russell was thought of by many as the best participant in NBA historical past.

Russell was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2011, the nation’s highest civilian honor. And in 2017, the NBA awarded him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

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William Felton Russell was born Feb. 12, 1934, in Monroe, Louisiana. His household moved to the Bay Space, the place he attended McClymonds Excessive Faculty in Oakland. He was a clumsy, unremarkable middle on McClymonds’ basketball workforce, however his measurement earned him a scholarship at San Francisco, the place he blossomed.

“I used to be an innovator,” Russell instructed The New York Occasions in 2011. “I began blocking photographs though I had by no means seen photographs blocked earlier than that. The primary time I did that in a recreation, my coach referred to as timeout and stated, ‘No good defensive participant ever leaves his toes.’”

Russell did it anyway, and he teamed with guard Okay.C. Jones to steer the Dons to 55 straight wins and nationwide titles in 1955 and 1956. (Jones missed 4 video games of the 1956 match as a result of his eligibility had expired.) Russell was named the NCAA match Most Excellent Participant in 1955. He then led the U.S. basketball workforce to victory within the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

With the 1956 NBA draft approaching, Celtics coach and basic supervisor Crimson Auerbach was keen so as to add Russell to his lineup. Auerbach had constructed a high-scoring offensive machine round guards Bob Cousy and Invoice Sharman and undersized middle Ed Macauley however thought the Celtics lacked the protection and rebounding wanted to remodel them right into a championship-caliber membership. Russell, Auerbach felt, was the lacking piece to the puzzle.

After the St. Louis Hawks chosen Russell within the 1956 draft, Auerbach engineered a commerce to land Russell for Ed Macauley.

Boston’s beginning 5 of Russell, Tommy Heinsohn, Cousy, Sharman and Jim Loscutoff was a high-octane unit. The Celtics posted the perfect regular-season file within the NBA in 1956-57 and waltzed by means of the playoffs for his or her first NBA title, beating the Hawks.

In a rematch within the 1958 NBA Finals, the Celtics and Hawks break up the primary two video games at Boston Backyard. However Russell suffered an ankle damage in Recreation 3 and was ineffective the rest of the collection. The Hawks ultimately received the collection within the six video games.

Russell and the Celtics had a stranglehold on the NBA Finals after that, happening to win 10 titles in 11 years and giving skilled basketball a degree of status it had not loved earlier than.

Within the course of, Russell revolutionized the sport. He was a 6-foot-9 middle whose lightning reflexes introduced shot-blocking and different defensive maneuvers that set off a fast-break offense into full improvement.

In 1966, after eight straight titles, Auerbach retired as coach and named Russell as his successor. This was hailed as a sociological advance, since Russell was the primary Black coach of a serious league workforce in any sport, not to mention so distinguished a workforce. However neither Russell nor Auerbach noticed the transfer that means. They felt it was merely one of the best ways to maintain successful, and as a player-coach, Russell received two extra titles within the subsequent three years.

Their greatest opponent was age. After he received his eleventh championship in 1969 at age 35, Russell retired, triggering a mini-Boston rebuild. Throughout his 13 seasons, the NBA had expanded from eight groups to 14. Russell did not should survive greater than three playoff rounds to win a title.

“If Invoice Russell got here again at this time with the identical gear and the identical brainpower, the identical particular person precisely as he was when he landed within the NBA in 1956, he’d be the perfect rebounder within the league,” Bob Ryan, a former Celtics beat author for the Boston Globe, instructed the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019. “As an athlete, he was up to now forward of his time. He’d win three, 4 or 5 championships, however not 11 in 13 years, clearly.”

Together with a number of titles, Russell’s profession additionally was partly outlined together with his rivalry in opposition to Wilt Chamberlain.

Within the 1959-60 season, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain, who averaged a file 37.6 factors per recreation in his rookie 12 months, made his debut with the Philadelphia Warriors. On Nov. 7, 1959, Russell’s Celtics hosted Chamberlain’s Warriors, and pundits referred to as the matchup between the perfect offensive and defensive facilities “The Massive Collision” and “Battle of the Titans.” Whereas Chamberlain outscored Russell 30-22, the Celtics received 115-106, and the sport was referred to as a “new starting of basketball.”

The matchup between Russell and Chamberlain turned considered one of basketball’s biggest rivalries. One in every of Celtics’ titles got here in opposition to Wilt Chamberlain’s San Francisco’s Warriors groups in 1964.

Though Chamberlain outrebounded and outscored Russell over the course of their 142 profession video games (28.7 rebounds per recreation to 23.7, 28.7 factors per recreation to 14.5) and their complete profession (22.9 RPG to 22.5, 30.1 PPG to fifteen.1), Russell often acquired the nod as the higher general participant, primarily as a result of his groups received 87 (61%) of these video games.

Within the eight playoff collection between the 2, Russell and the Celtics received seven. Russell has 11 championship rings; Chamberlain has simply two, and just one was received in opposition to Russell’s Celtics.

“I used to be the villain as a result of I used to be a lot greater and stronger than anybody else on the market,” Chamberlain instructed the Boston Herald in 1995. “Folks have a tendency to not root for Goliath, and Invoice again then was a jovial man and he actually had a fantastic chortle. Plus, he performed on the best workforce ever.

“My workforce was dropping and his was successful, so it could be pure that I might be jealous. Not true. I am very happy with the best way issues turned out. He was general by far the perfect, and that solely helped carry out the perfect in me.”

After Russell retired from basketball, his place in its historical past safe, he moved into broader spheres, internet hosting radio and tv discuss exhibits and writing newspaper columns on basic matters.

In 1973, Russell took over the Seattle SuperSonics, then a six-year-old growth franchise that had by no means made the playoffs, as coach and basic supervisor. The 12 months earlier than, the Sonics had received 26 video games and bought 350 season tickets. Underneath Russell, they received 36, 43, 43 and 40, making the playoffs twice. When he resigned, they’d a stable base of 5,000 season tickets and the fabric to succeed in the NBA Finals collection the subsequent two years.

Russell reportedly turned annoyed on the gamers’ reluctance to embrace his workforce idea. Some prompt that the issue was Russell himself; he was stated to be aloof, moody and unable to just accept something however the Celtics’ custom. Mockingly, Lenny Wilkens guided Seattle to a championship two years later, preaching the identical workforce idea that Russell had tried to instill unsuccessfully.

A decade after he left Seattle, Russell gave teaching one other attempt, changing Jerry Reynolds as coach of the Sacramento Kings early within the 1987-88 season. The workforce staggered to a 17-41 file, and Russell departed midseason.

Between teaching stints, Russell was most seen as a shade commentator on televised basketball video games. For a time he was paired with the equally blunt Rick Barry, and the duo offered brutally frank commentary on the sport. Russell was by no means snug in that setting, although, explaining to the Sacramento Bee, “Probably the most profitable tv is completed in eight-second ideas, and the issues I learn about basketball, motivation and folks go deeper than that.”

He additionally dabbled with appearing, performing in a Seattle Youngsters’s Theatre present and an episode of “Miami Vice,” and he wrote a provocative autobiography, “Second Wind.”

In 1974, Russell was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame, and in 1980, he was voted Best Participant within the Historical past of the NBA by the Skilled Basketball Writers Affiliation of America. He was a part of the seventy fifth Anniversary Crew introduced by the NBA in October 2021.

In 2013, Boston honored Russell with a statue at Metropolis Corridor Plaza.