In the 1959–60 season, the NBA witnessed the debut of legendary 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m) Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged an unprecedented 37.6 points per game in his rookie year.[31] On November 7, 1959, Russell's Celtics hosted Chamberlain's Warriors, and pundits called the matchup between the best offensive and best defensive center "The Big Collision" and "Battle of the Titans".[32] Both men awed onlookers with "nakedly awesome athleticism",[32] and while Chamberlain outscored Russell 30 to 22, the Celtics won 115–106, and the match was called a "new beginning of basketball".[32] The matchup between Russell and Chamberlain became one of basketball's greatest rivalries.[1] In that season, Russell's Celtics won a record 59 regular season games (including a then-record tying 17 game win streak) and met Chamberlain's Warriors in the Eastern Division Finals. Chamberlain outscored Russell by 81 points in the series, but the Celtics walked off with a 4–2 series win.[33] In the 1960 Finals, the Celtics outlasted the Hawks 4–3 and won their third championship in four years.[25] Russell grabbed an NBA Finals-record 40 rebounds in Game 2, and added 22 points and 35 rebounds in the deciding Game 7, a 122–103 victory for Boston.[1][18]
In the 1960–61 season, Russell averaged 16.9 points and 23.9 rebounds per game,[22] leading his team to a regular season mark of 57–22. The Celtics earned another post-season appearance, where they defeated the Syracuse Nationals 4–1 in the Eastern Division Finals. The Celtics made good use of the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers had exhausted St. Louis in a long seven-game Western Conference Finals, and the Celtics convincingly won in five games.[34][35]
The following season, Russell scored a career-high 18.9 points per game, accompanied by 23.6 rebounds per game.[22] While his rival Chamberlain had a record-breaking season of 50.4 points per game and a 100-point game,[31] the Celtics became the first team to win 60 games in a season, and Russell was voted as the NBA's Most Valuable Player. In the post-season, the Celtics met the Philadelphia Warriors of Chamberlain, and Russell did his best to slow down the 50-points-per-game scoring Warriors center. In Game 7, the game was tied with two seconds left when Sam Jones sank a clutch shot that won the Celtics the series. In the 1962 NBA Finals, the Celtics met the Los Angeles Lakers of star forward Elgin Baylor and star guard Jerry West. The teams split the first six games, and Game 7 was tied one second before the end of regular time when Lakers guard Rod Hundley faked a shot and instead passed out to Frank Selvy, who missed an open eight-foot last-second shot that would have won L.A. the title.[36] Though the game was tied, Russell had the daunting task of defending against Baylor with little frontline help, as the three best Celtics forwards, Loscutoff, Heinsohn and Tom Sanders, had fouled out. In overtime, Baylor fouled out the fourth forward, Frank Ramsey, so Russell was completely robbed of his usual four-men wing rotation. But Russell and little-used fifth forward Gene Guarilia successfully pressured Baylor into missed shots.[36][37] Russell finished with a clutch performance, scoring 30 points and tying his own NBA Finals record with 40 rebounds in a 110–107 overtime win.[18]
The Celtics lost playmaker Bob Cousy to retirement after the 1962–63 season, but they drafted John Havlicek. Once again, the Celtics were powered by Russell, who averaged 16.8 points and 23.6 rebounds per game, won his fourth regular-season MVP title, and earned MVP honors at the 1963 NBA All-Star Game following his 19 point, 24 rebound performance for the East.[22] The Celtics reached the 1963 NBA Finals, where they again defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, this time in six games.[38]
In the following 1963–64 season, the Celtics posted a league-best 58–22 record in the regular season. Russell scored 15.0 ppg and grabbed a career-high 24.7 rebounds per game, leading the NBA in rebounds for the first time since Chamberlain entered the league.[22] Boston defeated the Cincinnati Royals 4–1 to earn another NBA Finals appearance, and then won against Chamberlain's newly-relocated San Francisco Warriors 4–1.[39] It was their sixth consecutive and seventh title in Russell's eighth year, a streak unreached in any U.S. professional sports league. Russell later called the Celtics' defense the best of all time.
Russell defending Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers
In the following 1965–66 season, the Celtics won their eighth consecutive title. Russell’s team again beat Chamberlain’s Philadelphia 76ers 4 games to 1 in the Division Finals, proceeding to win the NBA Finals in a tight seven-game showdown against the Los Angeles Lakers.[41] During the season, Russell contributed 12.9 points and 22.8 rebounds per game. This was the first time in seven years that he failed to average at least 23 rebounds a game.
Before the 1966–67 season, Celtics coach Red Auerbach retired. Initially, he had wanted his old player Frank Ramsey as coach, but Ramsey was too occupied running his three lucrative nursing homes.[42] His second choice Bob Cousy declined, stating he did not want to coach his former teammates,[42] and the third choice Tom Heinsohn also said no, because he did not think he could handle the often surly Russell.[42] However, Heinsohn proposed Russell himself as a player-coach, and when Auerbach asked his center, he said yes.[42] Russell thus became the first African American head coach in NBA history,[1] and commented to journalists: "I wasn't offered the job because I am a Negro, I was offered it because Red figured I could do it."[42] The Celtics’ championship streak ended that season at eight, however, as Wilt Chamberlain's Philadelphia 76ers won a record-breaking 68 regular season games and overcame the Celtics 4–1 in the Eastern Finals.[43] The Sixers simply outpaced the Celtics, shredding the famous Boston defense by scoring 140 points in the clinching Game 5 win.[44] Russell acknowledged his first real loss in his career (he had been injured in 1958 when the Celtics lost the NBA Finals) by visiting Chamberlain in the locker room, shaking his hand and saying, "Great".[44] However, the game still ended on a high note for Russell. After the loss, he led his grandfather through the Celtics locker rooms, and the two saw white Celtics player John Havlicek taking a shower next to his black teammate Sam Jones and discussing the game. Suddenly, Russell Sr. broke down crying. Asked by his grandson what was wrong, his grandfather replied how proud he was of him, being coach of an organization in which blacks and whites coexisted in harmony.[44]
In Russell's penultimate season, the 1967–68 season, his numbers slowly declined, but at age 34, he still tallied 12.5 points per game and 18.6 rebounds per game[22] (the latter good for the third highest average in the league).[45] In the Eastern Division Finals, the 76ers had the better record than the Celtics and were slightly favored. But then, national tragedy struck as Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. With eight of the ten starting players on Sixers and Celtics being African American, both teams were in deep shock, and there were calls to cancel the series.[46] In a game called as "unreal" and "devoid of emotion", the Sixers lost 127–118 on April 5. In Game 2, Philadelphia evened the series with a 115–106 win, and in Games 3 and 4, the Sixers won, with Chamberlain suspiciously often defended by Celtics backup center Wayne Embry, causing the press to speculate Russell was worn down.[46] Prior to Game 5, the Celtics seemed dead: no NBA team had ever come back from a 3–1 deficit.[46] However, the Celtics rallied back, winning Game 5 122–104 and Game 6 114–106, powered by a spirited Havlicek and helped by a terrible Sixers shooting slump.[46] In Game 7, 15,202 stunned Philadelphia fans witnessed a historic 100–96 defeat, making it the first time in NBA history a team lost a series after leading 3–1. Russell limited Chamberlain to only two shot attempts in the second half.[18] Despite this, the Celtics were leading only 97–95 with 34 seconds left when Russell closed out the game with several consecutive clutch plays. He made a free throw, blocked a shot by Sixers player Chet Walker, grabbed a rebound off a miss by Sixers player Hal Greer, and finally passed the ball to teammate Sam Jones, who scored to clinch the win. Boston then beat the Los Angeles Lakers 4–2 in the NBA Finals, giving Russell his tenth title in 12 years.[1] For his efforts Russell was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. After losing for the fifth straight time against Russell and his Celtics, Hall-of-Fame Lakers guard Jerry West stated, “If I had a choice of any basketball player in the league, my No.1 choice has to be Bill Russell. Bill Russell never ceases to amaze me.
However, in the 1968–69 season, Russell seemed to reach a breaking point. Shocked by the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, disillusioned by the Vietnam War, and weary from his increasingly stale (and later divorced) marriage to his wife Rose, he was convinced that the U.S. was a corrupt nation and that he was wasting his time playing something as superficial as basketball.[47] He was 15 pounds overweight, skipped mandatory NBA coach meetings and was generally lacking energy: after a New York Knicks game, he complained of intense pain and was diagnosed with acute exhaustion.[47] Russell pulled himself together and put up 9.9 points and 19.3 rebounds per game,[22] but the aging Celtics stumbled through the regular season. Their 48–34 record was the team's worst since 1955–56, and they entered the playoffs as only the fourth-seeded team in the East.[48] In the playoffs, however, Russell and his Celtics achieved upsets over the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks to earn a meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. L.A. now featured new recruit Wilt Chamberlain next to perennial stars Baylor and West, and were heavily favored. In the first two games, Russell ordered not to double-team West, who used the freedom to score 53 and 41 points in the Game 1 and 2 Laker wins.[49] Russell then ordered to double-team West, and Boston won Game 3. In Game 4, the Celtics were trailing by one point with seven seconds left and the Lakers having the ball, but then Baylor stepped out of bounds, and in the last play, Sam Jones used a triple screen by Bailey Howell, Larry Siegfried and Havlicek and hit a buzzer beater which equalized the series.[49] The teams split the next two games, so it all came down to Game 7 in L.A., where Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke angered and motivated the Celtics by putting "proceedings of Lakers victory ceremony" on the game leaflets. Russell used a copy as extra motivation and told his team to play a running game, because in that case, not the better, but the more determined team was going to win.[49]
The Celtics were ahead by nine points with five minutes remaining; in addition, West was heavily limping after a Game 5 thigh injury and Chamberlain had left the game with an injured leg.[49] West then hit one basket after the other and cut the lead to one, and Chamberlain asked to return to the game. However, Lakers coach Bill van Breda Kolff kept Chamberlain on the bench until the end of the game, saying later that he wanted to stay with the lineup responsible for the comeback.[31][50] The Celtics held on for a 108–106 victory, and Russell claimed his eleventh championship in 13 years. At age 35, Russell contributed 21 rebounds in his last NBA game.[18] After the game, Russell went over to the distraught West (who had scored 42 points and was named the only NBA Finals MVP in history from the losing team), clasped his hand and tried to soothe him.[49] Days later, 30,000 enthusiastic Celtics fans cheered their returning heroes, but Russell was not there: the man who said he owed the public nothing ended his career and cut all ties to the Celtics.[49] It came as so surprising that even Red Auerbach was blindsided, and as a consequence, he made the "mistake" of drafting guard Jo Jo White instead of a center.[51] Although White became a standout Celtics player, the Celtics lacked an All-Star center, went just 34–48 in the next season and failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1950.[25] In Boston, both fans and journalists felt betrayed, because Russell left the Celtics without a coach and a center and sold his retirement story for $10,000 to Sports Illustrated. Russell was accused of selling out the future of the franchise for a month of his salary.
Russell's No. 6 jersey was retired by the Celtics in 1972,[52] and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975. Russell, who had a difficult relationship with the media, was not present at either event.[53] After retiring as a player, Russell had stints as head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics (1973 to 1977) and Sacramento Kings (1987 to 1988)
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