Russell’s family announced his death in a statement, saying he died peacefully with his wife Janine by his side. The family did not disclose the cause of death.
The 6’10” former center dominated the NBA as a defensive and rebounding force during his 13-year career, winning five MVP awards and becoming a 12-time all-star between 1956 and 1969. He also coached the Celtics in the last three years of during his playing career, he led the team to two more titles in addition to the nine he secured as a player. He was the first black head coach in the league.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Russell “stands for something much bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he built into the DNA of our league.”
“For nearly 35 years since Bill completed his groundbreaking career as the league’s first black head coach, we have been fortunate to see him at every major NBA event, including the NBA Finals, where he presented the Bill Russell Trophy to the MVP of the finals”, Silver. he said in a statement on Sunday. “Bill was the ultimate winner and the perfect teammate, and his impact on the NBA will forever be felt.”
Russell’s family also pointed to his long history of activism and social justice, saying “his understanding of struggle is what illuminated his life.”
“Bill called out injustice with a relentless honesty intent on disrupting the status quo and a powerful example that, though never humble in intent, will forever inspire teamwork, selflessness and thoughtful change,” the family said. “Maybe you’ll relive one or two of the golden moments he gave us, or remember his trademark laugh as he delighted in explaining the real story behind how those moments unfolded. And hopefully each of us will find a new way of acting or speak to Bill’s uncompromising, dignified and always constructive commitment to principles. This would be a final and lasting victory for our beloved #6.”
In 1980, Russell was voted the greatest player in NBA history by basketball players. He remains the sport’s most prolific scorer and an archetype of unselfishness who won with defense and rebounding while letting others score. Often, that meant Wilt Chamberlain, the only player of the era who was a worthy match for Russell.
But Russell dominated the only statistic he cared about: 11 championships to two.
Boston Celtics player-coach Bill Russell and guard Emmett Bryant head to the showers after the Celtics beat the Los Angeles Lakers 108-106 to win their eleventh NBA championship on May 5, 1969. Bettmann
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 violated for refusing to be drafted into the military.
In 2011, President Barack Obama presented Russell with 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 someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all people,” Obama said at the ceremony. “He marched with King, stood by Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the Black Celtics, he refused to play in the scheduled game. He put up with insults and vandalism, but continued to focus on making the teammates he loved better players and made it possible the success of so many who would follow.”
President Barack Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to Bill Russell. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
On Sunday, Obama said in a statement that, “as tall as Bill Russell was, his legacy rises much higher – both as a player and as a man.
“Perhaps more than anyone, Bill knew what it took to win and what it took to lead. On the court, he was the greatest champion in basketball history. Besides, he was a pioneer in civil rights,” Obama wrote.
Russell said that growing up in the segregated South and later in California, his parents instilled in him a quiet confidence that allowed him to brush 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 I was alive it was the idea that my mother and father loved my.” It was Russell’s mother telling him to ignore the comments of those who would see him playing in the yard.
“No matter what they say, good or bad, they don’t know you,” she recalled him saying. “They are fighting their own demons.”
But it was Jackie Robinson who 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 sports.”
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.
“He hung up and I asked myself, ‘How can you be a hero to Jackie Robinson?’ 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 attended high school in Oakland, California, and then 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 coveted Russell so much that he traded to the St. Louis Hawks for the second pick in the draft. He promised the No. 1-ranked Rochester Royals a lucrative visit from the Ice Capades, also managed by Celtics owner Walter Brown. However, Russell arrived in Boston to complain that he wasn’t that good.
“People said it was a wasted draft pick, wasted money,” he recalls. “They said: ‘He is 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 league’s best record.
The Celtics won the NBA championship – their first of 17 – in a 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 of the Finals. The Celtics won it again in 1959, starting an unprecedented streak of eight straight NBA crowns.
The towering Russell never averaged more than 18.9 points during his 13 seasons, each year averaging more rebounds per game than points. For 10 seasons he averaged more than 20 rebounds. He once had 51 rebounds in a game. Chamberlain holds the record with 55.
Auerbach retired after winning the 1966 title and Russell became a player-coach – the first black 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 their 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 unfulfilled — four-year stint as coach and GM of the Seattle SuperSonics and a less fruitful 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 25th Anniversary All-Time 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 Plaza of Russell surrounded by granite boulders 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. “I’m glad to see progress.”
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