BILL RUSSELL’S 10,000-REBOUND BALL
Bill Russell is the greatest winner in team sports. From 1957 to 1969 his Boston Celtics won 11 championships; he was the only player to be part of all of them. In addition, he won two national titles at the University of San Francisco and, in 1956, an Olympic gold medal. He also won five most valuable player awards.
Russell played defense like no one before him, and in a way that influenced everyone who came after. Psychologically intimidating, he dominated games from the defensive end, something that came as a revelation. His offensive statistics were useful but not gaudy, an average of 15.1 points per game for his career. But he didn’t need to pour in points for the Celtics to win, which is all that mattered to him.
When Russell joined the pros for the 1956–1957 season, pro hoops was still in its awkward phase, just seven years past the merger that created the National Basketball Association. There were franchises in Rochester and Fort Wayne, but not in Chicago or Los Angeles. Teams often played in low-rent venues and traveled on the cheap.
Russell quickly became the game’s first black superstar, in a league with only about 15 African American players.1 His was not a cuddly or anodyne public face. He frequently refused to give autographs and was frosty to the press. He once called basketball “the most shallow thing in the world”2 and was openly critical of America’s—and Boston’s—racial hypocrisies.
Russell would have been great anywhere, but he could not have landed in a better place than Boston. His previous relationships with coaches had been unfriendly and adversarial,3 but he clicked right away with Red Auerbach, who recognized his strengths. The Celtics had the core of a great team, including Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman, but it is no coincidence that they didn’t win a title until Russell arrived to anchor the defense.4 The next year, when he injured his ankle in the final, they faltered. Then they reeled off eight in a row. No one else, before or since, has won more than three straight. “We don’t fear the Celtics without Bill Russell. Take him out and we can beat them,” Lakers coach John Kundla said after the 1959 finals. “He’s the guy who whipped us psychologically. Russell has our club worrying every second.”5
The Celtics had only seven set plays; the offense revolved around getting turnovers or taking the ball off the boards. That was Russell’s specialty; he had a PhD in the geometry of basketball, as well as excellent timing and anticipation. This enabled him to out-rebound even bigger men. In 1962 he grabbed the ball shown here for his 10,000th rebound; for his career, he had 21,620 (an average of 22.5 per game)6 and recorded 9 of the top 20 seasons.7
Russell made the defensive rebound an offensive weapon. Before he even hit the floor, he could get the ball to the outlet, and the fast break would be on. This style of play required a high degree of intelligence, teamwork, and trust. Auerbach therefore sought, and found, men who were great teammates as well as great players. As a result, the Celtics became that rare organization anywhere in the 1950s and 1960s—multiracial and harmonious. There were no divas and no black or white cliques;8 the locker-room ribbing was both merciless and color blind. Russell remembered how one of his teammates mocked his brooding reputation: “I’d find him hunched over in the locker room with his fist on his chin, like Rodin’s Thinker, scowling ridiculously.” When Russell came in from the showers, he might see players sashaying around the locker room, modeling his stylish clothes.9
That attitude came from the top. Owner Walter Brown was genuinely beloved.10 The Celtics believed in Auerbach, who said he made decisions based only on what would help the team win. His actions proved it. In his first year as the Celtics coach, in 1950, Auerbach drafted the league’s first black player, Charles Cooper.11 In 1965 the team was the first to play five black starters, and three years later he named the first black head coach in any pro sport: Russell, who led the team to two titles in three years.
Russell’s prickly relationship to the game continued after his retirement. When the team wanted to raise his jersey to the rafters, he told Auerbach he would do it only in an empty Boston Garden, with a few teammates present.12 Three years later, he made it clear he did not want to be inducted into the Hall of Fame (he was anyway). But when it came time for the Celtics to honor Auerbach in 1985, Russell did return for that. Why? “Red Auerbach is my friend.”13
The NBA’s Coach of the Year Award is named after Auerbach; the MVP award for the finals is named after Russell. And that seems right. Together, they made the Celtics great and the NBA better.