San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
What Russell taught writer about job, life
Bill Russell and I never hit it off. However, he did teach me a valuable lesson that applies to journalism and life, about making snap character judgments.
In 1979 Russell wrote an autobiography and went on a book tour. My sports editor asked me to interview him. We met at a restaurant in Los Angeles. As an eager reporter, I came prepared with a list of brilliant questions, mostly non-basketball. I knew Russell was a Renaissance man who disliked being pigeonholed as a former basketball star.
You’ve seen video of how Russell blocked shots, with imperious disdain? That’s how he treated my questions. Finally, I asked him, respectfully, what he did want to talk about. He shrugged, as if to convey,
That’s your job, Cubbie.
Worst interview ever. And it
was to promote his book!
Maybe he was just having a bad-goatee day, but on two subsequent occasions at arenas, Russell dismissed my attempts to ask him a question. So for years I pegged him as the biggest jerk I’d ever met in sports, no small honor.
Then I read some stuff. When Russell was 8 or 9, he lived in Louisiana. His parents drove to a gas station. They had to let all the white customers fill up first. Bill’s dad couldn’t wait and started to drive away. The gas station owner aimed a pistol at Bill’s dad’s head and informed him that he would wait.
Bill’s parents soon moved the family to Oakland. I also read about how Russell was treated in Boston. And, recently, how he was treated by USF, a school he helped put on the map.
Maybe it’s exhausting to try to guess who hates you and who doesn’t, when they’re all smiling at you. Maybe you just say the hell with it. And maybe that’s a character fault, but most of us have ’em. When writers write about people, we should try to view our subject through more than our narrow personal lens.
Hey, at least I was more enlightened back then than the FBI, which compiled a file on civil rights activist Russell and labeled him “an arrogant Negro.”
Class dismissed.
Deep thoughts, cheap shots & bon mots ...
Free advice to the 49ers: If the Browns make you an offer for Jimmy Garoppolo, just say no. On principle. You can’t be the morality police for the NFL, but take a stand and decline to help a team get out of a jam it created
NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell reacted with delight at a 2009 news conference in Phoenix as he learned that the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award would be renamed in his honor.
for itself by going out and getting Deshaun Watson. At the 49ers’ camp, every day is Jimmy Garoppolo pro day. One thing Bill Russell got right: Autographs. He didn’t give them. He considered the act too impersonal. He would offer a handshake and a chat instead. In lieu of a no-look scrawl on a restaurant napkin, he was offering human interaction. That won’t sell on eBay, but it’s worth something, right? Debate topic: Did any two athletes ever do more to get their professional sport off the ground than Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain did for the NBA? The league was a struggling mom-and-pop operation back then. Russell’s dominance and intensity and Chamberlain’s amazing exploits vaulted the league to a new level of excitement and entertainment.
Also in that debate: the NFL’s Jim Brown/Johnny Unitas and baseball’s Babe Ruth/Satchel Paige. In college, the 6-foot-9 Russell and the 7-foot Chamberlain each high-jumped 6-foot-6, using now antiquated jumping styles, with little or no coaching or training. They had the potential to finish one-two in an Olympics decathlon, despite a tall-guy disadvantage in polevaulting. Chamberlain-Russell duels were epic. Their teams met 94 times in the regular season. Russell’s per-game averages (stathead.com): 14.2 points, 22.9 rebounds, .370 field-goal percentage. Chamberlain: 28.9 points, 28.1 rebounds, .488 FG percentage. Russell, who almost always had a superior supporting cast, won 57 of the 94 games. Chamberlain never came out of
the games; Russell rarely sat. Early candidate for Sportsperson of the Year: Tiger Woods, for rejecting an offer from the LIV golf tour for at least $700 million. Likely he could have negotiated that offer up to a cool billion. Phil Mickelson got $200 million to sign. Woods hasn’t fully explained why he spurned Saudi blood money, although he did criticize the LIV golfers for abandoning the PGA Tour that made them rich and famous. Whatever his reasoning, Woods was the guy the Saudis desperately needed to legitimize their greed-apalooza clown show. Instead, Tiger took one for the team, the human race.