Hard to find someone in the history of the game who has won as much as Bill Russell did with the Celtics.
Before Nadal and the Williams, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls or Pelé in the
canarinha,
there was this two-meter man who won eleven titles in thirteen seasons with Boston.
It is an unmatched brand in the NBA that, in his case, also extends with two collegiate championships and an Olympic gold at the 1956 Melbourne Games. Russell died this Sunday at the age of 88 at his home, his family has reported, who He has not disclosed the cause of death.
"He was the greatest champion of all team sports," Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, described him this Sunday in a statement.
Silver dwells in his farewell on one of the traits that have made Russell stand out beyond the courts, his activism for the civil rights of black minorities.
"Bill was fighting for something bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion, which have been stamped into the DNA of our league," says the commissioner, a close friend of the legend who died this Sunday.
“I usually call him the Babe Ruth of basketball because of how his figure transcends time,” he adds.
Russell became the NBA's first black coach in the spring of 1966.
In the first press conference he gave, an uncomfortable question that everyone expected came in the third question time.
Can you train whites without prejudice?
"I don't remember anyone asking a white coach back then if he could coach blacks without prejudice, so all I said was yes," Russell told
The New York Times
in 2011 .
That year, President Barack Obama presented Russell with the Medal of Freedom, one of the most distinguished awards given in the United States.
"When he was in high school, Bill Russell was cut from the basketball team ... he got better after that," Trump joked at the White House event.
The sports world has bowed at the feet of the legend of Russell.
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