In 1987, Bill Russell was not quite 20 years removed from his dominant days with the Boston Celtics when he embarked on an ill-fated 58-game run as coach of the Sacramento Kings. Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum came calling just as the season was getting under way, and tried to get a handle on not only where Russell was going – nowhere fast, as it turned out; he went 17-41, and never coached anywhere again – but where he had been.
That afforded Russell the opportunity to look back once more at his remarkable run with the Celtics, when he backstopped a team that won 11 NBA championships in 13 years and raised the game to new heights, quite literally. While blocked shots did not become an official stat until four years after his retirement in 1969, no one had protected the rim so fiercely to that point in league history, and few have done so since.
As he told McCallum, “I determined how the game was going to be played. It was going to be played my way.”
More significantly, Russell, who died last week at age 88, was going to live life his way. In a fraught period of American history – one of many – he stood up for social justice. Made his voice heard and his presence felt. Few have ever used their forum to such great effect. Last week on his podcast, retired sportswriter Bob Ryan, so revered for his coverage of pro basketball during his long career with the Boston Globe that he became a virtual ombudsman for the sport, called Russell “the greatest NBA figure of all time.”
Figure, not player.
Argue if you must about the GOAT-ness of Michael and LeBron, of Magic and Larry, of Kareem and Wilt. But nobody won more than Russell on the court, and nobody put themselves out there quite so much off it.
He attended the March on Washington in 1963 and the Cleveland Summit in 1967. He traveled to Mississippi for the funeral of civil rights leader Medgar Evers after he was assassinated by the KKK in 1963 and served as a pallbearer for Jackie Robinson in 1972. He led a boycott of a preseason game after he and his Black teammates were denied service at a Kentucky restaurant in 1961 and became the first Black head coach in a major American sport when Red Auerbach named him his successor in 1966. (For the record, Russell continued to play as well.)
And finally, he was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2011.
Pat Williams, retired after a long career as an NBA executive that included a 12-year run as the Sixers’ general manager (1974-86), was a catcher at a Phillies minor-league affiliate in Fort Myers, Fla., in 1963. After the season he was traveling back home to Wilmington, Del., when his parents asked him to meet them in the District of Columbia instead.
So it was that he too attended the March on Washington. Over the phone the other day he recalled seeing Russell seated in the front row – “They invited him to sit on the stage, and he declined,” Williams said – but more significantly remembered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. A gifted public speaker himself, the 82-year-old Williams said that in the annals of American oratory it ranks “probably second only to Lincoln at Gettysburg.”
Williams wouldn’t meet Russell until the 1968-69 season, when he began his NBA run as the Sixers’ business manager and Russell was in his final season as a player. Boston dismissed Philadelphia in five games in the Eastern semifinals, and it was up to Williams to escort Russell to an office in the bowels of the Spectrum so he could do an interview with a Boston radio station. (A sign of the times, that.)
When Russell was done, Williams offered congratulations. Then he looked down the line, past the Celtics’ upcoming matchup with the Knicks, to the Finals.
“Can you take the Lakers?” he asked Russell.
“Does a bear defecate in the woods?” Russell responded.
That’s Williams’ recollection, anyway. Russell likely used slightly more colorful language.
“That,” Williams said with a laugh, “was my introduction to Bill Russell.”
They would cross paths repeatedly over the years, notably at the league’s 50th anniversary celebration at the All-Star break in Cleveland in 1997 and again several years later, when Williams interviewed him for his radio show in Orlando. And Williams developed an abiding respect for who Russell was, and what he stood for.
“He was very, very active,” Williams said. “He lent his name, lent his presence during that very, very difficult period in American history. He was right in the middle of it, and had strong feelings about it. He was a very intelligent guy, and very sensitive to what was going on in the world.”
As it happens, Oscar Robertson has moved to Orlando, where Williams has made his home since 1986, largely while serving as a Magic executive. They often have lunch, and the Big O has made clear his regard for Russell. So too has Wayne Embry, a long-time NBA executive who during his playing career served as Russell’s backup for two seasons; he and Williams spoke over the phone recently.
(One other piece of evidence was the essay Kareem Abdul-Jabbar composed about Russell on his substack. Among other things, Kareem wrote that Russell showed him how to be “a better man.”)
“Russell was their guru, if I may say that,” Williams said. “They looked to Russell for leadership. They wanted to emulate him in many ways.”
Two years ago in Slam Magazine, Russell wrote about the forces that shaped him. He mentioned his grandfather and father standing up for themselves in the face of racism as the youngest Russell grew up in Monroe, La., and an incident when he was 9, after his family moved to Oakland, Calif.
By Russell’s recollection, five white boys came running past the building in which Russell’s family lived, and one of them slapped Russell as he was seated on the steps. When he complained to his mom, she marched her son down the street and told him he would have to fight all five kids, one at a time. He did so, and by his reckoning won just twice.
But that wasn’t really the point. As he wrote:
What I learned from these events and the many other events that I saw or experienced like them was twofold: First, that you must make the price of injustice too high to pay, and second, that such events are not reflective of your character, but of the character of the perpetrator.
As has often been related since his passing, he did not have it easy while living in Boston, despite his great success. Vandals infamously broke into his suburban home and trashed many of his trophies, spray-painted racial epithets on the walls and defecated in his bed. So while Russell has always expressed his appreciation for the Celtics organization and his teammates, his relationship with the city was far more complicated. He moved about as far out of town as he could, to Mercer Island, Wash., following his retirement, and at his request his No. 6 was retired at a private ceremony in Boston Garden in 1972.
As always he was doing things on his terms, living life his way. Yet in his Slam essay he looked around and wondered about our nation, and how much progress had actually been made in race relations. He mentioned the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, and wrote the following:
Racism cannot just be shaken out of the fabric of society because, like dust from a rug, it dissipates into the air for a bit and then settles right back where it was, growing thicker with time.
Police reform is a start, but it is not enough. We need to dismantle broken systems and start over. We need to make our voices heard, through multiple organizations, using many different tactics. We need to demand that America gets a new rug.
For the vast majority of his 88 years, Bill Russell shook things up. He was more than a player, more than a star, more than a champion. He was, instead, a voice, a presence and a standard-bearer, issuing challenges to those around him to stand taller and be better. Those challenges remain.