Russell

Winner of 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons, two NCAA national titles in three years of college, a gold medalist in the 1956 Olympics, and capturing two California state basketball titles in high school.  The greatest defender, rebounder, and outlet passer in NBA history and perhaps the greatest team player ever, Bill Russell is gone at 88.

Also the first black coach in American professional sports and, while still playing, leading the Boston Celtics to two NBA championships.  Demanded the respect he was entitled to and often, because of his skin color, did not receive.  Unflinching in his demands for equal rights for all.

I remember very little of Russell from his playing days though I read quite a bit about his rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain. In the 60s there was very little NBA available on TV, except on occasional delayed tape replays.  For some reason I can no longer remember, the first NBA player I fixated on was Elgin Baylor of the Lakers.  I remember devouring Baylor's stat lines when game results were published in the New York Post, often delayed by a day because the Lakers home games ended after the East Coast newspaper went to press.

What I do remember is the post-retirement Russell; his interviews and game broadcasts revealed a highly intelligent and very funny man.  And that laugh!  Actually a joyous cackle that filled the room.

It was only in those later years I learned about his conflicted relationship with the city of Boston.  Maybe it wasn't so conflicted as, in his view, he remained a Celtic for life but didn't want to have anything to do with the city because of its treatment of him, refusing to return for any event celebrating him until the last decade of his life.

I wrote about some of this in a review of the book, The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics, and What Matters in the End, a biography of Bob Cousy which spends a lot of time on Bill Russell:

The story reaches its peak with the relationship between Cousy and Bill Russell or, more precisely, in Cousy's attempt to make sense of that relationship and his guilt as he's gotten older over not doing more to support Russell, the first black NBA star and the greatest winner in sports history, with 11 championships in his 13 seasons as a player and then he first black player-coach in professional sports, on racial issues during his troubled time in Boston.

Cousy was not overcoming any prejudice.  In his early years with the Celtics he roomed with Chuck Cooper, the first black ever drafted by an NBA team.  He and Chuck went out to jazz clubs together and became life long friends.  But Cooper, like Cousy, was a quiet guy. 

Bill Russell was another matter.  Joining the Celtics in 1957, the 6'10" center was a transformational player with his defense, rebounding, and outlet passing.  If LeBron James is the best NBA player since 2000, and Michael Jordon #1 between 1975 and 2000, Russell was the best during the NBA's first 25 years.  He was also very smart, very proud, very sensitive, not willing to quietly suffer racial mistreatment, unapproachable at times (refusing to sign autographs) and with a personality that could change abruptly from gregarious to closed and wary.  Red Auerbach, who named Russell as his successor as coach, once remarked, "The real Russell is a very difficult man to know, but one worth knowing". 

During the late 50s and into the 60s, Bill Russell was outspoken on issues of racial justice both in American society in general, and Boston specifically - and the issues he spoke out on deserved to be addressed.  Russell suffered personally for it with numerous incidents of vandalism, and some truly disgusting acts, at his home in the Boston suburbs.  Those events scarred Russell, leading him to insist for decades that he played for the Celtics, not the city of Boston, once saying, "I'd rather be in jail in Sacramento than be mayor of Boston."

Cousy and Russell respected each other, played together seamlessly, and never had any personal conflict.  But they were not close, making even more surprising the often-reserved Russell's gracious words for Cousy on his retirement:

Cousy is outstanding.  We see each other as brothers not as great athletes.  Cousy, just by being himself, has given me so much . . . You never got the impression - 'This is Bob Cousy . . . [and] this is the rest of the team . . . You meet a Cousy not once in a month, but once in a lifetime.  Bob Cousy has made playing with the Celtics one of the most gratifying things in my life . . . Like the guy [at Bob Cousy Day] said, 'We all love you, Cooz,' and we really do.

Russell and his wife also presented the Cousys with a bronze desk clock with the engraved inscription; May The Next Seventy Be As Pleasant As The Last Seven, From The Russells To the Cousys. It was the only retirement gift he received from a teammate.

For many years Cousy has wished he had a better relationship with Russell.  He has stayed in touch with many of his former teammates, black and white, but only occasionally run into Russell and continually plays over the events of those years in an effort to figure out what went wrong (Russell would still occasionally call his white teammate Heinsohn and tell him "You are one of the few people I still like").  It finally broke to the surface in 2001 when Cousy did an interview with ESPN for a documentary on Russell.  Asked about racial issues, Cousy said:

"We could've done more to ease his pain and make him feel more comfortable.  I should've been much more sensitive to Russell's anguish in those days.  We'd talk - uh . . ."

And then Cousy broke down weeping.  Later, he reflected on his relationship with Russell.  After recounting his friendships with Boston's first black players:

"Then I run into literally my first angry black man.  And Russ to this day is angry.  It's obvious from the get-go, and now in my Psych 101 analysis, I think this simply scared me off.  I still think it was my fault.  I'm six years older, I'm the Man.  I'm in charge.  I'm the captain.  It was my responsibility to reach out, but it intimidates me for whatever reason.  I don't know how to deal with this.  Like so many times in life, when we are unsure, or stumbling, and doing the wrong thing in establishing a relationship, I do nothing.  Obviously nothing is not good enough.  At the end of the day, Russ doesn't know how to take me, and I don't know how to take him.  We don't have any confrontation.  We get along, but it's like a couple that decides to stay together for the sake of the kids, you know?"

Cousy returned to time and time again to his relationship with Russell in his interviews with Pomerantz, and the author relates Cousy's attempts through teammates and others to reach out to Russell.  To find out what happens read The Last Pass.  [And you can watch Cousy talk about the relationship in an interview in 2018 when he was 90 - Cooz turns 94 next week].

Update: A remembrance from Kareem Abdul Jabar, who was 14 when he first met Russell.