Bill Russell Born: Basketball's Ultimate Champion
Bill Russell's Boston Celtics won eleven championships in thirteen seasons. He won two championships as player-coach — the first Black head coach in major American professional sports history. He was a ferocious defender, obsessive about positioning and timing, able to redirect shots rather than swat them away, turning defense into a form of offense. After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he canceled a basketball camp he'd organized and said he wasn't sure basketball mattered anymore. Then he kept playing.
February 12, 1934
92 years ago
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