I would have expected Queen’s We are the Champions to be sung across Wembley Stadium Sunday evening in London but instead it was the equally familiar strains of Sweet Caroline as the English Women’s soccer team ‘brought it home’ by winning the 2022 UFEA Cup beating Germany 2-1. It was the first English victory in a major international soccer competition in 56 years. So, tip of the hat to the Lionesses for bringing the Cup home to the land which invented football.
As promised in yesterday’s blog, today we honor the passing of someone as famous as Nichelle Nichols and her character, Lt. Uhura. It, of course, is Bill Russell, perhaps the greatest champion in the history of any American professional sport. According to his New York Times obituary, “Russell was the ultimate winner. He led the University of San Francisco to N.C.A.A. tournament championships in 1955 and 1956. He won a gold medal with the United States Olympic basketball team in 1956. He led the Celtics to eight consecutive N.B.A. titles from 1959 to 1966, far eclipsing the Yankees’ five straight World Series victories (1949 to 1953) and the Montreal Canadiens’ five consecutive Stanley Cup championships (1956 to 1960).” In addition to his run of eight consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) championships, he won one championship in 1957 and then ended with two more in 1968-69, for a total of 11 professional championships in 13 years. He was also a five-time MVP and 12-time NBA All-Star. In 1980, he was voted as the best NBA player of all time. In other words, he was the best of the best.
But it was for his work on and off the court in support of racial justice and equality which will always be his most lasting legacy. I will not detail the bigotry and hate Russell was subjected to while in Boston as a player. Suffice to say, it was a disgusting as anything you can image. Or as Russell said, “a flea market of racism.” Yet Russell was somehow able to stand above it and not simply persevere but be a national leader. “He took part in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was seated in the front row of the crowd to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to Mississippi after the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered and worked with Evers’s brother, Charles, to open an integrated basketball camp in Jackson. He was among a group of prominent Black athletes who supported Muhammad Ali when Ali refused induction into the armed forces during the Vietnam War.”
Russell was also instrumental in opening up head coaching positions for black athletes and others. In addition to his greatness as a player, he was inducted a second time into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a coach. Marc J. Spears, writing in Andscape, said his “second induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach who made history as the NBA’s first African American head coach. He led the Celtics to two titles as a player-coach and also coached the Seattle SuperSonics and Sacramento Kings. He “was not the first Black head coach in professional sports, but he had the greatest impact as the first to be chosen, in 1966, to lead a team in one of America’s major sports leagues. Fritz Pollard, a star running back, had coached in the National Football League, but that was in the 1920s, when it was a fledgling operation. John McLendon coached the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League in 1961-62, but the A.B.L. was a secondary attraction.” As noted, he led the Celtics to two additional NBA titles in 1968 and 1969 as the team’s player coach.
John Doleva, president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Basketball Hall of Fame, said of Russell’s induction as a coach he “made it known that it was important to him that the museum continue to induct Black pioneers and overlooked legends. “He saw over time that we were making the right moves in terms of African American players before him,” Doleva told Andscape in a phone interview. “There was evident widespread support of him being enshrined as a coach. Being the first African American coach was something to celebrate. He was a man of few words later in his life, but he quietly appreciated what we were doing. But he also gave me the look that there was more to do, which I took with enthusiasm.””
I cannot think of a greater tribute to Russell than the one which came from then President Barack Obama who awarded Russell “the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, at the White House in 2011, honoring him as “someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men.””
Right about now Red Auerbach is probably twirling a stogie in anticipation of lighting it up after another classic matchup between Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in the great beyond. Farewell Bill Russell for a life well lived.
