Bill Russell: Basketball’s Zeus on Mount Olympus

When I first learned about basketball, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls seemed like ancient history. Their highlights were never in HD. The triangle offense seems prehistoric nowadays to the modern game’s run-and-gun style. Seinfeld was the No. 1 television show and to a small brain like mine, that show had some very out-of-touch fashion.

But in my mind, the history of the NBA started with Michael Jordan getting drafted in 1984, and there was no one even close to his level.

Until I played a video game.

Like most nine year-olds, I was not a huge fan of school and puberty wouldn’t run me over like a Mack truck until a few years later so I was only focused on sports and video games. My siblings and I bonded through Mortal Kombat (I wasn’t allowed to play Call of Duty until 13, yes that was a thing), and looking back, video games exposed me to new things.

And new people.

NBA 2K12 released on October 4, 2011. This is no understatement when I say that game changed my life. Completely unrelated but this game had one of the greatest intros EVER!!!

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Back to the point, there was a mode in 2K12 called NBA’S GREATEST, where you would have to beat legendary teams and players. This is where I found out about Bill Russell.

Hundreds of attempts and this guy on the Celtics in black and white was kicking my ass and rated a 99 overall but I never heard of him before. After the billionth time of losing to the Celtics in the game, I decided to fire up the ol’ Dell desktop and find out who the hell this Russell guy is.

My head exploded. ELEVEN (!!!) CHAMPIONSHIPS??!! FIVE MVP TROPHIES??! The only guy that could soundly defeat Wilt Chamberlain??!! From then on, the name Bill Russell was tattooed on my mind whenever my friends, but Russell's civil rights actions put him in a whole different category of athlete.

Russell is in the very small group of athletes whose societal and cultural impact may outweigh their impact on their respective sport.

Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell. That’s it. No one else. What Russell did with his peers, cannot be quantified. It cannot be measured accurately by any Basketball Reference page or paragraph in a Basketball Hall of Fame exhibit.

The fact that Russell even had a career in Boston is remarkable. Over the 13 year stretch as a player and coach, the Celtics only averaged over 10,000 fans twice, according to the Association for Professional Basketball Research.

Burglars breaking into his home, with his family inside, defecating in his bed, and spray-painting racial epithets on the walls.

The city never wanted him, yet he pushed through the noise. He played for his team, never made excuses, and won at a level that created a mythical aura around him. For generations, the name Bill Russell echoed from the time games were on radio to today when we can access archives of games at the tap of a finger, but what should never be forgotten is that basketball never defined the man known as Bill Russell.

Winning was on his mind, but his legacy is so much more than hardwood and orange leather. He wanted to help people. He made an impact far greater than any career points or rebounds list would indicate.

This loss was more than losing an NBA legend. This loss was about losing a man who stopped at nothing to show others they could do what he does, black, white or polka-dotted.

There will never be another Bill Russell. Period.

Although I never got to see him play, I will forever appreciate and respect what he did for an entire country.

Thank you, Mr. Russell, for showing a young nine-year-old kid that greatness doesn’t lie in the numbers.