NBA trailblazer Bill Russell dies at 88

Bill Russell, a The 11-time NBA champion, known for breaking down racial barriers and his defensive prowess on the basketball court, died on Sunday. He was 88 years old.

A announcement posted on Twitter did not include details of his death but said Russell “passed away peacefully…with his wife, Jeannine, by his side.”

Throughout his 13-season career with the Boston Celtics, the 6-foot-10 Russell had 21,620 rebounds, the second most of all time. His keen awareness of the ground revolutionized the way defense was played in the NBA.

Russell also became the first black head coach in any major American professional sports league when Red Auerbach handed him the reins of the Celtics in 1966, and he completed the last three years of his career on the field as a player-coach.

Born February 12, 1934, William Felton Russell spent his early years in Monroe, Louisiana, before his family moved west during World War II, eventually landing in Oakland, California.

In school, he was a natural track star and led his high school basketball team to back-to-back state titles.

At the University of San Francisco – barely a basketball powerhouse – he played under coach Phil Woolpert, who preached a style based on hard-nosed defense, a system that helped Russell explode into a national phenomenon. .

His trademark move? He jumped. He eschewed the defensive tradition, refusing to keep his feet on the ground, changing every possession, as well as the sport itself.

He averaged 20.7 points and 20.3 rebounds per game throughout his three-year college career, winning national championships in 1955 and 1956.

After bringing that second title back to campus, Russell turned pro. Although several franchises fought for him, he was the second pick in the 1956 NBA draft, which brought him to the Celtics.

After a pit stop in Melbourne, Australia for the Summer Olympics, it took little time for the Celtics led by Russell and Auerbach to dominate. Scroll through the league annals of the next few seasons and you’ll see a combination of ‘Boston’, ‘Celtics’ and ‘Russell’ alongside a laughable number of records, like Russell’s long arms, Auerbach’s gritty style and the Celtics. team chemistry has led the franchise to 11 titles in 13 years.

Russell averaged over 20 rebounds per game in every season of his career except for his freshman year and his last two years. He’s been named the league’s most valuable player five times – tied with Michael Jordan and behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most part. And in the 1963-64 season, he grabbed 24.7 rebounds per game, about half of what an entire team brings in today.

How good were the Celtics with Russell? The club won the title in: 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969.

In public and in front of the press, Russell was abrupt. He once said he owed Celtics fans ‘nothing’ and ‘denies[d] smile and be kind to children.

His aloof demeanor has been commonly attributed to the racial climate of the time – a time when his home was broken into and vandalized, with fanaticism scrawled on its walls. He and his black teammates were refused service at a restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky, before a Celtics exhibition game, which they later decided to boycott in protest.

In 1963 he marched in Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his advocacy in 2010.

Russell retired after his 11th championship run in 1968-69. He was briefly the head coach of the Seattle Supersonics and the Sacramento Kings, but after taking off that Celtics No. 6 jersey for the last time, he largely disappeared from public life, opting to reside on a small island just outside east of Seattle ― family, no hassle.

He was not present when the Celtics first retired his jersey in 1972. He ‘insisted’ on it hanging from the rafters when the famed Boston Garden was empty of all fans, both his memory of his time in a city he would later call a “flea market of racism”.

It wasn’t until 27 years later that Russell agreed to be present for a uniform retirement. According to The New York Times, he shed tears that night at the sight of tens of thousands of Celtics fans standing in green, chanting his name, three decades after he unceremoniously left the franchise.

Sara Bondioli contributed reporting.