The Great Migration, as documented by Isabel Wilkerson of the 6 million blacks who migrated from the Deep South between 1916 and 1970 the warmth of another sunparents of Huey Newton, who would go on to lead the Black Panther Party, and parents of Jimi Hendrix, who would go on to ignite the world of electric guitar and rock.
There was also another kind of revolutionary who emerged from that African-American diaspora: the rambunctious son of a married couple, Charles and Katie Russell, who left Monroe, Louisiana for Oakland in 1943. was Russell. His basketball his chops on the Oakland playground improved them at the University of San Francisco and perfected them with the Boston Celtics.
Bill Russell died Sunday at the age of 88 from age-related causes. His influence on the game was so great that the NBA Finals his MVP trophy was named after him.
Russell was only nine years old when his parents arrived in Oakland, so he felt only a few of the Jim Crow insults his parents had received in Louisiana. Charles Russell was shotgun to his face at a gas station and Katie was told by a police officer to go home and change because he was wearing “white women’s clothing.” But his son comes to know heartache and hard times himself (his mother died when he was 12), and vicious racism too, especially after arriving in 1950s Boston. I got to know Unlike Monroe, LA.
The barriers Russell faced in putting together his Hall of Fame career, and his nagging reactions to them, became a major part of his legacy. But it would be a mistake to overshadow to them what Russell accomplished as a game-changing player. As with Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and later LeBron James, what Bill Russell said off the court resonated with what he accomplished on the court. rice field.
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(We can’t ignore that LeBron made headlines a few weeks ago when he accused Boston fans of being racist. This is the same thing Russell said decades ago. Russell, of course, had an unsavory receipt: A search of their home in the Boston suburb of Reading found burglars breaking in, spraying the walls with racist slurs, and stealing some of his trophies. I broke a cage and defecated on the bed.)
Cut off from his middle school basketball team during his childhood, Russell was more of a hard worker than a talent. However, he practiced diligently in both basketball and track, and the showiness of his long legs, combined with his work ethic and intelligence, gradually began to produce results. One of his rivals was a future crooner named Johnny Mathis of Washington High School in San Francisco.Hall of Fame baseball player Frank Robinson. However, the only college basketball scholarship offered was from the Jesuits at the University of San Francisco, and Russell jumped at the opportunity. There he teamed up with guard KC Jones, another defensive fiend, to dominate college basketball. In his junior season, they won the opening game, losing to UCLA, and on the road to the NCAA championship he won 25 straight. In the senior season, Russ, KC, and the rest of the Dons ran the table 27–0, defeating Iowa 83–71 in the NCAA championship game. A template was set for Russell to become the best winner in professional sports (not that he said it humbly many times).
Meanwhile, interest in a player who was two years younger than Russell, two inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and appeared to be 100 times more athletic than Russell was much higher across the continent. Everyone knew Wilton Norman Chamberlain, the breathtaking athlete from Philadelphia and everyone wanted him. Chamberlain’s admission to the University of Kansas in 1956, the year that ended his career, ended a bitter recruiting battle.
And so began a storyline that lasted until Wilt died of heart failure in 1999. Wilt dominated the headlines, but Russell won the championship.
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Russell wasn’t the first great defensive center, but he was the first center that could build an offense out of defensive talent. When it came time for his 1956 NBA Draft, Red Auerbach, then in his sixth year as Celtics coach and manager and still looking for his first NBA title, saw this in Russell. rice field. Auerbach surrendered his two All-Stars, Cliff Hagan and Charles “Eazy Ed” McCauley, to the St. Louis Hawks in exchange for 6’10” Russell.
The move may have said as much about the times as it did about the insight that judges Auerbach’s talent. The Hawks, who played in a deeply segregated city, agreed to the trade, at least in part because they were getting his two white players instead of one. black guy.
Over the next 13 years, 11 of which led to championships, the Celtics’ fast break revolutionized basketball. Most of the time Russell started the break by blocking shots and then regaining them. He prided himself more on strategic blocks than on spectacular ones. However, Russell also rebounded frequently, entered the break and scored a dunk on the other side. Once he grew into a body, no one made him awkward anymore.
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Appeared in over 963 games in the regular season and an additional 165 in the playoffs — the left-handed Pivotman averaged 42 minutes per game and was a rarely injured Ironman — Russell’s understated greatness is key to the Boston dynasty became. Russell often felt that his talent was not recognized by the media and fans, but he was named MVP of the league five times more than Wilt earned.
Nothing better represented what Russell meant to the Celtics, and his talent that haunted his more talented nemesis Wilt, than his last game. It was May 5, 1969. Game 7 of the Finals at the Forum in Los Angeles, Russell in his last season with the Celtics, and Wilt in his first season with the Lakers.
It’s been a weak year for Boston, especially for Russell. At his age of 34, he has been trodden on and off the floor and overwhelmed by the mental strain of being the team’s player and coach. This was the honor given to him by Auerbach in 1966. Celtic had finished his season as a regular in his fourth place. Eastern he was in the conference and it was a small miracle that they led Chamberlain, Elgin his Baylor and Jerry West his Lakers to Game 7. It seemed like a preordained victory when Lakers owner Jack Kent and his Cook ordered the balloon to be released. After an estimated win. They hung netted from the Forum ceiling, a quiet, puffy taunt Russell and the Celtics noticed when they got to the court.
Sure enough, the Celtics won 108-106, their seventh Finals win without losing to the Lakers since Russell entered the league. Russell only scored 6 points in that Game 7, but he played all 48 minutes and he had 21 rebounds. As for Chamberlain, he sat out for the final six minutes after first hitting his right knee hard and calling for a breather, only to be benched by coach Butch van Breda Kolff. But this game seemed to say it all about Russell. Years later, Jerry West stared at a photo of Russell breathing with his hands on his hips. “He looks almost imposing,” said West, fascinated by Russell’s ability to win big things.
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By the time of that final, Russell had become a political activist recognized as a central figure in the turmoil of the times, in contrast to Chamberlain, who was Richard Nixon’s delegate to the 1968 Republican convention. I was living with Jim Brown in Hollywood this summer amidst a tsunami of chaotic Democratic convention news. Russell’s radicalization began as a boy in Oakland, where his father, who became a steel worker after the death of him and his wife, endured the then-endemic racism and attended college. Service to USF teams because they had black players.
But Russell’s desire to speak out against the system really took hold in Boston. He couldn’t help but notice that the fans cheered him on when he was in the garden parquet, but often denigrated him when they weren’t. In his 1979 autobiography, Russell called Boston “his market free of racism.” Second Wind: Memoirs of a Man with an Opinion“The city had corrupt, fellow city hall racists, racists throwing bricks and sending them back to Africa, and fake radical chic racists in college areas.” When.
Russell fought back in any way he could, earning him the passive-aggressive adjective often hung over the thinking of black athletes at the time. Russell never intervened in Ali’s eye-popping antics, but he never made it easy for those he considered racist. When he retired as No. 6 in 1972, Russell insisted on doing it in an empty Boston Garden with only his teammates. And remembering the league’s disrespect, where de facto discrimination exists, he refused to attend the 1975 Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
After retiring, Russell left Boston and coached the Seattle SuperSonics for four years (1973-74 to 1976-77) with moderate success. He then did various NBA broadcasting gigs in the 70’s and his 80’s. He was never satisfied or very good in the role. saturday night live In 1979, he changed the direction of television comedy. Russell returned to the league in 1987 to become coach and general manager of the Sacramento Kings, but he only lasted 58 games as coach (the Kings were 17–41 when he stepped down). .
Over the next decade Russell was more or less out of the league, remaining at his home in Mercer Island and spending much of his time playing golf. , All-Star Weekends, Finals, and other NBA events. He was alert and held Medea at arm’s length, but was friendly and often lit the room with his distinctive shrill cackle that seemed to come out of nowhere. One of the things that had to be done was Jerry Reynolds, one of his assistant coaches during his brief stint in Sacramento.Stern also won the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award in 2009. announced that it would be handed out after the fight Russell won 5?6?
Stern also arranged a settlement between the two giants of the game, and in Wilt’s final years, he and Russell occasionally appeared together at NBA events. In 2012, the NBA released a documentary of his 1962 night, when Wilt scored his 100 points in one game, narrated by Russell. “He’s been gone for over ten years,” Russell muses near the end of the film.
The same can be said for Russell. Russell could not have scored 100 points in his single game. Perhaps he was not 3 games. But he was staring at another peak. He wanted to be recognized as “sport’s greatest winner.” It’s an argument he made often, and it has lasting merit.
And Bill Russell:
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