Russell died “peacefully” with his wife Janine by his side, a statement posted on social media said. Arrangements for his memorial service will be announced soon, according to the release. “But for all the victories, Bill’s understanding of the struggle is what illuminated his life. From boycotting a 1961 exhibition game to exposing discrimination that was too tolerated to leading his first comprehensive basketball camp Mississippi in the fiery aftermath of Medgar [Evers’] murder, in decades of activism finally recognized by receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom… Bill called out injustice with a relentless honesty intent on disrupting the status quo and a powerful example that, though never his humble intent, will forever inspire teamwork, selflessness and thoughtful change,” the statement said. “Bill’s wife, Jeannine, 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 delighted in explaining the real story behind how those moments unfolded. And hopefully each of us will find a new way to act or speak with Bill’s uncompromising, dignified and always constructive commitment to principles. That would be a final and lasting victory for our favorite #6.” An announcement… pic.twitter.com/KMJ7pG4R5Z — TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) July 31, 2022 In a 15-year span beginning with his junior year at the University of San Francisco, Russell had the most remarkable career of any player in the history of team sports. At USF, he was a two-time All-American, won two straight NCAA championships and led the team to 55 straight victories. And he won a gold medal in the 1956 Olympics. In his 13 years in Boston, he led the Celtics to the NBA Finals 12 times, winning the championship 11 times. NBA commissioner Adam Silver called Russell “the greatest champion in all of team sports” in a statement Sunday. “I loved my friendship with Bill and was thrilled when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I often called him the Babe Ruth of basketball for how he transcended time. Bill was the ultimate winner and the consummate teammate, and his influence on the NBA will be felt forever,” Silver said. A five-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, Russell was an uncanny shot blocker who revolutionized NBA defensive concepts. He finished with 21,620 career rebounds — an average of 22.5 per game — and led the league in rebounding four times. He had 51 rebounds in one game and 49 in two others and posted 12 straight seasons of 1,000 or more rebounds. Russell also averaged 15.1 points and 4.3 assists per game during his career. Until the exploits of Michael Jordan in the 1990s, Russell was considered by many to be the greatest player in NBA history. Russell was awarded the Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2011, the nation’s highest civilian honor. And in 2017, the NBA presented him with the Lifetime Achievement Award. William Felton Russell was born on February 12, 1934 in Monroe, Louisiana. His family moved to the Bay Area, where he attended McClymonds High School in Oakland. He was an awkward, no-nonsense center on McClymonds’ basketball team, but his size earned him a scholarship to San Francisco, where he flourished. “I was innovative,” Russell told the New York Times in 2011. “I started blocking shots even though I’d never seen shots blocked before. The first time I did that in a game, my coach called a timeout and said, “No. A good defensive player never gets off his feet.” Russell did it anyway and teamed with guard KC Jones to lead the Dons to 55 straight wins and national titles in 1955 and 1956. (Jones missed four games of the 1956 tournament because his eligibility had expired.) Russell was named the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player in 1955. He then led the USA basketball team to victory in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. With the 1956 draft approaching, Celtics coach and general manager Red Auerbach was eager to add Russell to his roster. Auerbach had built a high-scoring offensive machine around guards Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman and undersized center Ed Macaulay, but he believed the Celtics lacked the defense and rebounding needed to turn them into a championship-caliber club. Russell, Auerbach felt, was the missing piece of the puzzle. After the St. Louis Hawks drafted Russell, Auerbach engineered a trade to land Russell for Ed Macaulay. Boston’s starting five of Russell, Tommy Heinsohn, Cousy, Sharman and Jim Loscutoff was a high-octane unit. The Celtics posted the NBA’s best regular season record in 1956-57 and waltzed into the playoffs for their first NBA title, beating the Hawks. In a rematch of the 1958 Finals, the Celtics and Hawks split the first two games at the Boston Garden. But Russell suffered an ankle injury in Game 3 and was ineffective the rest of the series. The Hawks eventually won the series in six games. Russell and the Celtics had a stranglehold on the NBA Finals after that, winning 10 titles in 11 years and giving professional basketball a level of prestige it hadn’t enjoyed before. Along the way, Russell revolutionized the game. He was a 6-foot-9 center whose lightning-quick reflexes brought the shot-blocking and other defensive maneuvers that spark a fast-break offense into full swing. In 1966, after eight straight titles, Auerbach retired as coach and named Russell as his successor. It was hailed as sociological progress, since Russell was the first Black manager of a major league team in any sport, let alone one that excelled so much. But neither Russell nor Auerbach saw the move that way. They felt it was simply the best way to keep winning, and as a player-coach, Russell won two more titles over the next three years. Their biggest opponent was age. After winning his 11th championship in 1969 at age 35, Russell retired, prompting a mini-rebuild. During his 13 seasons, the NBA had expanded from eight teams to 14. Russell’s Celtics teams never had to survive more than three rounds of the playoffs to win a title. “If Bill Russell came back today with the same equipment and the same brain power, the same person he was when he arrived in the NBA in 1956, he would be the best rebounder in the league,” said Bob Ryan, former Celtics. The beat writer for The Boston Globe told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019. “As an athlete, he was way ahead of his time. He would have won three, four or five championships, but not 11 out of 13 years, obviously.” Along with many titles, Russell’s career was also defined in part by his rivalry against Wilt Chamberlain. In the 1959-60 season, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain, who averaged a career-high 37.6 points per game in his rookie year, made his debut with the Philadelphia Warriors. On November 7, 1959, Russell’s Celtics hosted Chamberlain’s Warriors, and pundits called the matchup between the best offensive and defensive centers “The Big Collision” and “Battle of the Titans.” While Chamberlain outscored Russell 30-22, the Celtics won 115-106 and the game was called “the new beginning of basketball.” The rivalry between Russell and Chamberlain became one of basketball’s greatest rivalries. One of the Celtics’ titles came against Wilt Chamberlain’s San Francisco’s Warriors in 1964. Even though Chamberlain outplayed and outplayed Russell during his 142 career games (28.7 rebounds per game in 23.7, 28.7 points per game in 14.5) and his entire career (22.9 RPG in 22.5, 30.1 PPG in 15.1), Russell usually didn’t get the rebound. as the best player overall, mainly because his teams won 87 (61%) of those games. In the eight playoff series between the two, Russell and the Celtics won seven. Russell has 11 championship rings. Chamberlain has just two, and only one came against Russell’s Celtics. “I was the bad guy because I was a lot bigger and stronger than anybody else out there,” Chamberlain told the Boston Herald in 1995. “People tend not to root for Goliath, and Bill back then was a happy guy and he really had a great laugh. In addition, he played on the best team of all time. “My team was losing and his team was winning, so it would be natural for me to be jealous. It’s not true. I’m more than happy with the way things turned out. Overall he was by far the best and that only helped from the best I have.” After Russell retired from basketball, his place in history secure, he moved into broader fields, hosting radio and television shows and writing newspaper columns on general topics. In 1973, Russell took over the Seattle SuperSonics, then a six-year expansion franchise that had never reached the playoffs, as coach and general manager. The previous year, the Sonics had won 26 games and sold 350 season tickets. Under Russell they went 36, 43, 43 and 40, making the playoffs twice. When he resigned, they had a solid base of 5,000 season tickets and the hardware to reach the NBA Finals the next two years. Russell reportedly grew frustrated with the players’ reluctance to embrace his team’s idea. Some suggested that the problem was Russell himself. He was said to be aloof, moody and unable to accept anything other than the Celtics tradition. Ironically, Lenny Wilkens led Seattle to a championship two years later, preaching the same team spirit that Russell had unsuccessfully tried to instill. A decade after leaving Seattle, Russell made another attempt at coaching, replacing Jerry Reynolds as the head coach of the Sacramento Kings early in the 1987-88 season. The team posted a 17-41 record and Russell left in the middle of the season. Among coaches, Russell was most visible as a color commentator on televised basketball games. For a time he was paired with the equally blunt Rick Barry and the duo provided brutally honest commentary on the game.