BOSTON (AP) — Bill Russell, the NBA great who anchored a Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 championships in 13 years — the last two as the first black head coach in any major American sport — and marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., died Sunday. He was 88.
His family posted the news on social media, saying Russell had died with his wife Jeanine by his side. The statement did not provide a cause of death.
“Bill’s wife Jeanine and his many friends and family thank you for keeping Bill in your prayers. “Perhaps you will relive one or two of the golden moments he gave us, or recall his trademark laugh as he happily explained the true story behind how those moments unfolded,” the family said in a statement. “And we hope that each of us can find a new way to act or speak with Bill’s uncompromising, dignified and always constructive commitment to principle.” It will be one last and lasting victory for our beloved number 6.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement that Russell was “the greatest champion in all of team sports.”
“Bill stood for something much bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he instilled in the DNA of our league. At the height of his athletic career, Bill was a vigorous advocate for civil rights and social justice, a legacy he passed on to generations of NBA players who followed in his footsteps,” Silver said. “Through taunts, threats and unimaginable adversity, Bill rose above it all and remained true to his belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity.
A Hall of Famer, five-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, Russell was voted the greatest player in NBA history by basketball writers in 1980. He remains the sport’s most prolific scorer and archetype of dedication, winning with defense and rebounding, leaving the scoring to others. Often that meant Wilt Chamberlain, the only player of the era who was a worthy rival to Russell.
But Russell dominated the only stat he cared about: 11 over two titles.
The Louisiana native also made a lasting mark as a black athlete in a city — and country — where race is often a flashpoint. He was at the March on Washington in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech and supported Muhammad Ali when the boxer was impaled for refusing to be drafted into the military.
In 2011, US President Barack Obama awarded Russell the Medal of Freedom along with Congressman John Lewis, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and baseball great Stan Musial.
“Bill Russell, the man, is a man who stands up for the rights and dignity of all people,” Obama said at the ceremony. “He marched with King; he stood next to Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the Black Celtics, he refused to play in the scheduled game. He endured insults and vandalism, but he remained focused on making the teammates he loved better players and made possible the success of so many who would follow him.”
Growing up in the segregated South and later in California, Russell said, his parents instilled in him the calm confidence that allowed him to shrug off racist taunts.
“Years later, people would ask me what I had to go through,” Russell said in 2008. “Unfortunately or fortunately, I’ve never been through anything. From the first moment of my life it was the idea that my mother and father loved me. Russell’s mother was the one who would tell him to ignore the comments of those who might see him playing in the yard.
“Whatever they say, good or bad, they don’t know you,” he recalled her saying. “They are fighting their own demons.”
But Jackie Robinson gave Russell a road map for dealing with racism in his sport: “Jackie was a hero to us. He always acted like a man. He showed me the way to be a man in professional sport.”
The feeling was mutual, Russell learned, when Robinson’s widow, Rachel, called and asked him to be a pallbearer at her husband’s funeral in 1972.
“She hung up and I was like, ‘How do you become a Jackie Robinson character?'” Russell said. “I was so flattered.”
William Felton Russell was born on February 12, 1934 in Monroe, Louisiana. He was a child when his family moved to the West Coast and he went to high school in Oakland, California, and then to the University of San Francisco. He led the Dons to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956 and won a gold medal in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
Celtics coach and general manager Red Auerbach wanted Russell so much that he was able to trade him to the St. Louis Hawks for the second pick in the draft. He promised the Rochester Royals, who owned the No. 1 pick, a lucrative visit to the Ice Caps, who were also managed by Celtics owner Walter Brown. Still, Russell arrived in Boston with complaints that he wasn’t that good.
Still, Russell arrived in Boston with complaints that he wasn’t that good. “People said it was a wasted project choice, wasted money,” he recalled. “They said, ‘He’s no good. All he can do is block shots and rebound.” And Red said, ‘That’s enough.’
The Celtics also took Tommy Heinsohn and KC Jones, Russell’s college teammate, in the same draft. Although Russell joined the team late because he was leading the USA to Olympic gold, Boston finished the regular season with the best record in the league.
The Celtics won the NBA championship – the first of 17 – in the seventh game of double overtime against Bob Pettitte’s St. Louis Hawks. Russell won his first MVP award the following season, but the Hawks won the title in a rematch final. The Celtics won it all again in 1959, starting an unprecedented streak of eight straight NBA crowns.
Russell, a six-foot-10 center, never averaged more than 18.9 points in his 13 seasons, each year averaging more rebounds per game than points. In 10 seasons, he averaged over 20 tackles. He once had 51 tackles in a game; Chamberlain holds the record with 55.
Auerbach retired after winning the title in 1966, and Russell became a player-coach — the first black head coach in NBA history and nearly a decade before Frank Robinson took over baseball’s Cleveland Indians. Boston finished with the best regular season record in the NBA, but the title streak ended with a loss to Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Division Finals.
Russell led the Celtics to back-to-back titles in 1968 and ’69, winning seven-game playoff series against Chamberlain each time. Russell retired after the ’69 Finals, returning for a relatively successful but unsuccessful four-year stint as coach and GM of the Seattle SuperSonics and a less successful half-season as coach of the Sacramento Kings.
Russell’s No. 6 jersey was retired by the Celtics in 1972. He earned spots on the NBA’s All-Time 25th Anniversary Team in 1970, the 35th Anniversary Team in 1980, and the 75th Anniversary Team . In 1996, he was hailed as one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players. In 2009, the NBA Finals MVP trophy was named in his honor.
In 2013, a statue was unveiled in Boston’s City Hall Square of Russell, surrounded by granite blocks with quotes about leadership and character. Russell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975, but did not attend the ceremony, saying he should not have been the first African-American inducted. (Chuck Cooper, the NBA’s first black player, was his choice.)
In 2019, Russell accepted his Hall of Fame ring at a private gathering. “I felt that others before me should have had this honor,” he tweeted. “It’s good to see progress.”
“I value my friendship with Bill and was thrilled when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Silver said in a statement. “I often called him the Babe Ruth of basketball because of how he overcame the weather. Bill was the ultimate winner and the ultimate teammate, and his impact on the NBA will be felt forever. We send our deepest condolences to his wife Janine, his family and his many friends.”
His family said arrangements for Russell’s memorial service will be announced in the coming days.
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