By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
Black players weren’t expected to become basketball superstars, back in the America of the 1950s and 60s, when intolerance was uniform, inherent and everywhere.
That didn’t stop Bill Russell.
On his way to an extraordinary tally of 11 NBA titles, Russell, whose death at the age of 88 was announced via social media on Sunday, became the hardwood’s first Black celebrity, by sheer weight of achievement, athleticism, brilliance and fearlessness.
American sports — heck, this country’s entire way of life — is designed to laud victory above most else. No one symbolized winning more than Russell, because he chased it so relentlessly, pulled it off so skillfully and repeated it so incredibly often. What’s more unfathomable, 11 championships, or eight in a row (1959-66)? Take your pick.
Russell won when his team was favored and did it one more time, unforgettably, when they weren’t. The Boston Celtics weren’t supposed to add a final ring to Russell’s haul in 1969, coming up against the original NBA superteam, a Los Angeles Lakers squad boasting Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.
That didn’t stop Russell, by then player-coach, who played all 48 minutes and snatched 21 rebounds to orchestrate a Game 7 stunner for the ages before heading off into retirement.
Years earlier, Russell wasn’t supposed to become a basketball sensation. As a 5-foot-10 high schooler, he believed a job in the shipyards was the likeliest outcome for his future. That didn’t stop him, and neither did light recruitment from colleges, leading San Francisco to a pair of national championships and the United States to a 1956 Olympic gold.
Black men were not expected to become head coaches, with the visual of white players taking instruction from a non-white general deemed to be too jarring for standing sensibilities. That didn’t stop Russell, hand-picked for the Celtics job by Red Auerbach himself, when the veteran tactical maestro eventually stepped down and sought a successor.
Those were drastically different times, and while America’s conversation on race is not close to being settled, Russell faced a level of discrimination no current player, thankfully, could imagine.
In 1961, outraged as Black Celtics players being denied entry to a restaurant in Lexington, Ky., he fronted a player protest. Two years later, he joined Martin Luther King Jr. and fellow star athletes Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in supporting Muhammad Ali’s refusal to…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at FOX Sports Digital…