The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Russell lived a life like few others
Bill Russell hated autographs. Saw no point to them. If he was out dining and got approached by someone asking for his signature, Russell’s usual response was to instead ask the person to join him at the table to have a conversation about life.
The autograph-seekers almost always declined.
Oh, the stories they missed.
Russell, the greatest winner in the history of team sports, died July 31 at 88. The basketball legacy is beyond well-known: 11 championships in 13 years with the Boston Celtics, first Black coach in the NBA, first Black coach to win an NBA title, Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach, Olympic champion, NCAA champion, member of the league’s 75th anniversary team, and the namesake of the NBA Finals MVP award which, had it existed when he played, he would have won at least a half-dozen times.
But if those souvenir hounds had taken Russell up on the chance to sit with him for a meal, they might have heard about his obsession with golf. Or the mating
habits of bees, something he penned a column about once. Or expensive cars with souped-up sound systems so he could blare the music of Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, or Crosby, Stills and Nash — some of his favorites.
“His mind was bigger than basketball,” author Taylor Branch, who spent about a year living with Russell near Seattle in the 1970s while working with him on a book, said. “And so was his personality, as great as he was in basketball.”
Take away all the oncourt accomplishments, and Russell still lived a life.
He stood side-by-side with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, the height of the civil rights movement. He was in the audience when King delivered the “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington in 1963. He marched in Mississippi after the slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. He supported Muhammad Ali when the fighter refused to go to Vietnam. He helped start the National Basketball Players Association. President Barack Obama — at about 6-foot-2, a taller-than-average individual — had to stretch a bit when draping the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Russell’s neck in 2011, even after Russell crouched down to accommodate the moment.
“He endured insults and vandalism, but he kept on focusing on making the teammates who he loved better players, and made possible the success of so many who would follow,” Obama said that day. “And I hope that one day, in the streets of Boston, children will look up at a statue built not only to Bill Russell the player, but Bill Russell the man.”
Russell once got asked a question about being a
Black star in Boston, a city with a complicated history when it comes to race. The premise was that it had to be difficult for Russell to live in such a place, to play for fans in such a city.
“What I ascribed to do, and I did quite well, is every time I came into an adversarial situation, I decided to take control of it so that if a guy came up to me and tried to give me a bad day, I made sure that he was the one who left with the bad day,” Russell said. “And so, to do this took thought, planning and discretion and intelligence. That was the way I conducted my life.”
Case in point: The apparent invasion of raccoons into Reading, Massachusetts, around 1958.
In his second season with the Celtics, Russell bought a house in Reading. He left for a road trip and his garbage cans got turned over. Same thing happened during the season’s second road trip. Russell went to the police, who surmised that raccoons must be the culprits. Russell asked for a gun permit.
“The raccoons heard about that,” Russell said. “Never turned the trash cans over again.”
The gun never got purchased, either.