The most prolific winner in history of team sports

By B.G. Kelley

Remember this as you slouch into your sofa to watch the NBA title series: the face of NBA championships belongs to Bill Russell. Not Michael Jordan, or Larry Bird, or LeBron James.

Bill Russell.

I say this with some authority: The great Boston Celtics center, long retired and now 81 years old, won 11 league championships in 13 years, making him the most prolific winner in the history of team sports.

Russell also won Olympic Gold in the 1956 Games and two NCAA championships in '55 and '56 playing for the University of San Francisco. Sports Illustrated named him the 20th century's greatest winner.

Bob Cousy, the Celtics' Hall of Fame playmaker who played during six of Russell's championships, once told me, "Once Russ got here, nobody could keep up with us. He got every rebound, and that started our fast break. That's how we won all those championships."

They didn't come easy. Certain dynamics accompanied Russell's winning ways.

A sensitive man, Russell would experience anxiety attacks before big games, sometimes impelling him to run to the locker-room bathroom to vomit. Many times, to release the pressure and tension he felt as the linchpin of the Celtics' dynasty, he would, introspectively, walk in the dark of night the three-mile path encircling a lake in suburban Wakefield, just outside of Boston.

Then there was the biggest challenge to winning those championships: Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt was the most unstoppable offensive force in the history of the NBA. He owns the two most Herculean achievements in basketball history: scoring 100 points in a game, and averaging - averaging, mind you - 50.4 points a game in the l961-62 season.

Russell will forever be linked to Wilt. For 10 years - 1959-69 - Wilt and Russ gave NBA fans the most compelling individual duel in the game's history. Their head-to-head matchups were so gripping that the other players on the court were frozen at times watching the two greats.

Wilt would usually win the statistics battle (the points and rebounds), but Russell would win the wars (the games and championships). In their 10 years of mano-a-manos, Russell won nine championships to Wilt's one.

And like Jackie Robinson, Russell transcended sports. When the nascent civil rights movement began to effect changes in the '60s, Russell, in l966, became the first black head coach in the NBA. In l968, he became the first black coach to win an NBA championship.

A cerebral man, Russell has authored three best-selling books in retirement - Russell Rules, Go Up For Glory, and Second Wind - and has been a popular speaker on the lecture circuit.

Many fans watching the NBA championship series most likely never saw Russell play - and perhaps some have never even heard of him. That is a loss, for to this day, Bill Russell remains a singular experience, the locus of that experience lying somewhere between the body and mind or, even more, in their fusion.