Bill Russell Turned Enemy Players Into Basket Cases

It wasn't exactly the welcome wagon.

The day William Fenton Russell's family moved from Louisiana to Oakland, Calif., the 9-year-old took a breather on the front steps of his new home. Suddenly, five boys ran by. One slapped Russell.

"When I told my mother what happened, she grabbed me and took me outside," the now salty-bearded Russell told IBD. "She made me fight all five guys, one at a time. I lost three of the fights."

To most youngsters, that would make the afternoon a painful defeat.

"But the idea wasn't whether I won or lost, she said," recalled Russell (who turned 73 in 2007). "It was to let them know I would fight."

It was a hard lesson about not walking away from a challenge. But it served Russell well.

"If you quit, you never have the opportunity to win," Russell said.

Russell has capitalized on his chances more than most.

Sports Illustrated crowned him the greatest team player on the greatest team ever. Small wonder. In 13 years with the Boston Celtics, he won 11 National Basketball Association titles. He was the league's Most Valuable Player five times and an NBA All-Star in 12 seasons.

In one incredible 13-month span, he won three world-class titles. In March 1956 his University of San Francisco team won its second straight national championship. Nine months later Russell's U.S. hoop squad won the Olympic gold medal. In April 1957, he led the Celtics to their first NBA title.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1974. In 1980, the Professional Basketball Writers Association of America named him the best player in NBA history.

Russell's glory almost never happened. In his second year of high school, he got cut from the junior varsity squad early in tryouts.

"I was very skinny," Russell said. "And I wasn't very skilled."

Frank Robinson, the baseball great, was on the McClymonds High School basketball team with Russell. "He couldn't even put the ball in the basket when he dunked," Robinson told Sports Illustrated.

Russell told one of the coaches, George Powles, he was thinking of giving up the sport. Powles saw that Russell had potential, but needed lots of seasoning. The next day, Powles took Russell to the Boys' Club and told him to practice daily.

Russell spent countless hours at the Boys' Club and improved. Eventually he made the school's varsity team. By chance, Hal DeJulio, a friend of University of San Francisco coach Phil Woolpert, saw Russell play for McClymonds. DeJulio persuaded Woolpert to offer Russell a scholarship.

Russell worked hard to make the most of his opportunity. "I was picked only because I had graduated in midyear and other players ... weren't available," Russell wrote in his book "Russell Rules."

In town after town, he studied his talented teammates' moves. One, Eural McKelvey, was an outstanding rebounder. Russell memorized how he angled past other players, how he positioned himself, how and when he jumped. Then he tried to imitate McKelvey.

It was the same painstaking attention to detail that Russell had shown as a youngster.

"One of the first things my mother did after we moved to California was take me for a library card," he said. "I went every Saturday. And I pored over art books. I studied pictures by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. At home I tried to draw what I had memorized."

He did the same thing with other players' moves.

"Riding a bus from one game to the next, I'd close my eyes and picture moves by McKelvey and others," he said. "I pictured it over and over until I knew I could do it myself."

Russell wasn't afraid to innovate. Today we take for granted the athletic nature of basketball. But it was Russell who invented the run-and-jump court ballet we enjoy now.

"Before Bill Russell came along, basketball was essentially a horizontal game played by landlocked Caucasians," wrote sports columnist Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe.

Even Russell's college coach criticized his leaping style of defense.

"But I studied the rules," said Russell, who was one of the top five high school high jumpers in his state. "Most people say the rules say what you can't do. I saw that they also tell you what you can do."

Russell became so good at shot blocking, opponents often were scared to take favorite shots. The 6-foot-91/2-inch center's reputation disrupted opponents' offenses.

Better yet, in an era when defenders were happy just to swat a ball out of bounds, Russell focused on deflecting balls into teammates' hands. He succeeded 80% of the time, estimated Red Auerbach, the Celtics' coach from 1950 to 1966.

Russell pushed to help his teammates do what each did best. "I'd get the ball (off a defensive rebound) to (Bob) Cousy. Cousy would pass to (Tom) Heinsohn. And Heinsohn got the basket," Russell said.

Russell averaged 15 points a game. He worked to set up plays and was an eagle-eyed passer. "I could have scored more, but it would have taken energy away from playing defense," he said. "We always won as a team, not individuals."

Win he did, whether against Oscar Robertson's Cincinnati Royals, Jerry West's Los Angeles Lakers or Wilt Chamberlain's teams.

This story originally ran May 31, 2001, on Leaders & Success.

Copyright 2007 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.