Bill Russell

The Full Biography

Bill Russell. Center. Captain. The first Black head coach in the NBA, who treated eleven championships as a byproduct of a standard.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a tall man in Celtic green, both hands up, already in the air before the shooter has decided. The years were 1957 to 1969. The building was the old Boston Garden. What the still cannot show is William Felton Russell of West Monroe, Louisiana, a boy who left the Jim Crow South for Oakland, a college champion who then made the professional game a study in defense, and a long public life as a man who would not let the banners become the whole sentence.

He was born on February 12, 1934, in West Monroe. The family went west to Oakland when he was a boy. His mother died when he was twelve. His father, Charles, kept the household together. Russell was not a polished prodigy. He grew late, learned late, and then learned faster than the people who had overlooked him. The University of San Francisco took him. With K. C. Jones he won NCAA titles in 1955 and 1956. In Melbourne in 1956 he won Olympic gold for the United States. Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics wanted him enough to trade for the rights. Russell arrived in December 1956, after the Games, and the league’s geometry changed.

Eleven championships in thirteen seasons. Five Most Valuable Player awards. The numbers are so clean they can sound like a typeface. The work was not clean. He blocked shots to start the break, not to collect a statistic — the league did not even officialize blocks until after he was gone. He ran. He talked. He made a franchise of Irish-Catholic Boston, in a city that did not always return the favor off the court, into a dynasty that still defines the sport’s idea of winning. Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, Sam Jones, John Havlicek, and then a young player-coach named Russell. Auerbach lit the cigar. Russell decided whether the other team would be allowed to finish a thought.

Boston was not a sanctuary. He bought a house in a white suburb and found the welcome that era reserved for a Black champion who would not shuffle. He spoke about it without the diplomat’s varnish. He supported Muhammad Ali. He stood with the civil-rights movement when a safer star would have sold sneakers and smiled. The Celtics retired his number 6 while he was still the standard. After his death the entire league retired it. That honor is rare because the career was rare.

The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.Bill Russell

The turn is 1966. Auerbach stepped away from the bench and handed the job to Russell — player and coach, the first Black head coach in NBA history, in the same city that had already given him eleven Aprils of work and a more complicated set of winters. He won two more titles as player-coach, in 1968 and 1969, then walked away at thirty-five. He had nothing left to prove to a scoreboard. He had a great deal left to say to a country.

The college years are not a preface. At the University of San Francisco, with K. C. Jones and coach Phil Woolpert, the Dons won fifty-five straight and the NCAA titles of 1955 and 1956. In Melbourne in November 1956 he won Olympic gold for the United States, then reported to Boston in December. Red Auerbach had traded Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan to the St. Louis Hawks for the rights. The Hawks would beat a Russell-less Celtics team in the 1958 Finals, the one title Boston dropped in his window. The rest of the ledger is a kind of typeface: championships in 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969. Five Most Valuable Player awards — 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965. Twelve All-Star Games. He blocked shots to start the break, not to collect a statistic. The league did not officialize blocks until after he was gone. The fear he installed does not need a row in the ledger.

The rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain is the plot the highlight shows prefer. The work was more specific. He ran. He talked. He made Sam Jones, Tom Heinsohn, John Havlicek, and a young player-coach named Russell into a single idea of help defense. Auerbach lit the cigar. Russell decided whether the other team would be allowed to finish a thought. Off the floor the city was not a sanctuary. He bought a house in Reading, Massachusetts, and found the welcome that era reserved for a Black champion who would not shuffle. The house was vandalized. He spoke about it without the diplomat’s varnish. He stood with the Cleveland Summit for Muhammad Ali in 1967. He wrote Go Up for Glory in 1966, while he was still the standard. He declined to attend many of his own ring ceremonies. He did not owe the town a victory lap it had not always earned off the floor.

The dynasty is a list of Aprils and a list of names. Cousy ran the first years. Heinsohn, the Joneses, Satch Sanders, Don Nelson, Bailey Howell, Havlicek coming off the bench and then not. Russell’s job was the defensive end of the floor and the standard in the locker room. He was not a high scorer. He was the reason the other team’s high scorer had a worse night than the box score admitted. The 1962 Finals against the Lakers went to a seventh game in overtime. The 1966 title was Auerbach’s last as coach. The 1968 and 1969 titles were Russell’s as player-coach, against a Wilt Chamberlain team in Philadelphia and then in Los Angeles, the second of those after a season in which people had already begun to write Boston off. He retired in 1969 with eleven rings and a city that still did not know what to do with him off the parquet. The Celtics retired No. 6 while he was still the standard. He did not always show up to watch them raise it.

Oakland remained the first American weather after Louisiana. McClymonds High School was the late growth, the body arriving after the people who scout pretty had already left the gym. USF was the first coach who saw the defense. Melbourne was the gold medal between college and the Garden. The South he had left did not leave him. He spoke about it for the rest of the life. Basketball was the smaller subject. That sentence is the second career, already in motion before he hung up the jersey.

West Monroe, Louisiana, is Jim Crow. Oakland is the move. His mother died when he was twelve. Charles Russell kept the household together. The body arrived late. McClymonds, then USF, then Melbourne, then the Garden. Eleven championships in thirteen seasons is so clean it can sound like a typeface. The work was not clean. He blocked to start the break. He talked. He made Irish-Catholic Boston, in a city that did not always return the favor off the court, into a dynasty that still defines the sport’s idea of winning. Player-coach in 1966, first Black head coach in the league, two more titles, then the walk-away at thirty-five. Seattle. Sacramento. Second Wind. Red and Me. The Medal of Freedom. Mercer Island. The league-wide 6. Basketball was the smaller subject. He said so while he could still say it from a bench he himself had invented.

Reading, Massachusetts, was not a sanctuary. The house was vandalized. He spoke about it. The Cleveland Summit for Ali was not a photo opportunity. Go Up for Glory came out while he was still the standard. He declined ceremonies. He wrote Second Wind with Taylor Branch and Red and Me about Auerbach. Obama hung the Medal of Freedom on him in 2011. He died on July 31, 2022, at eighty-eight, in the Seattle area. In August the league retired No. 6 in every building. The Garden is gone. The standard is not. Every modern big man who talks about help defense is speaking a dialect he invented. Every franchise that hangs a banner for a coach of color is walking through a door he opened with a playing career still attached.

He married, raised children, divorced, married again. The private life was not a second box score. Friends describe a man who laughed easily in the right room and did not perform gratitude for people who wanted the champion without the critique. He was, to the end, more interested in whether you had done the work than in whether you had liked him.

The later years

After 1969 he walked away at thirty-five and did not come back as a mascot of his own highlights. He coached the Seattle SuperSonics from 1973 to 1977 and took them to the playoffs; the job was not a second dynasty. He did not need one. In 1987–88 he coached the Sacramento Kings for a season that did not become a banner. Television commentary paid some of the years. The books paid the rest of the sentence. Second Wind, written with Taylor Branch and published in 1979, is the memoir that treats basketball as the smaller subject. Russell Rules (2001) put the standard in writing for people who had only seen the stills. Red and Me (2009) is a book about Auerbach, which is to say a book about the only coach he fully trusted and the city that had hired them both.

He lived in the Seattle area, for a long stretch on Mercer Island, and stayed close to a small circle. He married more than once and raised children; the private life was not a second box score. Friends describe a man who laughed easily in the right room and did not perform gratitude for people who wanted the champion without the critique. In 2011 President Barack Obama hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him in the East Room. Appearances at Finals felt like a court coming to order. He would not let eleven rings become a gag order on race, on Boston, or on who is allowed to lead. Those years were long enough to watch the sport become wealthy, global, and still not finished with the questions he had asked in the 1960s.

He died on July 31, 2022. He was eighty-eight. The league stopped. Players who had never seen him in person spoke as if they had been coached by him, which, in a way, they had. In August the NBA retired No. 6 league-wide — the banner in every building, not only in Boston. That honor is rare because the career was rare. He had already, decades earlier, declined to attend ceremonies that asked him to smile for a town that had not always smiled back. The league’s last gesture was the sport admitting the file was never only Boston’s. Mercer Island was the last address. The small circle kept the house. The books stayed in print. The Medal of Freedom stayed in the file beside the eleven banners. He had already, in Second Wind, told anyone who would read that the rings were not a gag order. The sport spent the rest of his life, and then a week of obituaries, catching up to a sentence he had written in 1979.

After he was gone

Every modern big man who talks about help defense is speaking a dialect Russell invented. Every franchise that hangs a banner for a coach of color is walking through a door he opened with a playing career still attached. The Garden is gone. The standard is not.

He came out of West Monroe and Oakland, won in college and in Melbourne, made Boston a verb, coached himself to two more titles, and then spent fifty years refusing to let eleven rings be a gag order. If you only remember the blocked shot, you have the still. If you remember the house in the suburb, the clipboard in 1966, and the number in every arena, you have him.

Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

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