Olympic icon Bill Russell dead at 88

Sports icon William Felton Russell, died peacefully on Sunday with his wife, Jeannine and family by his side. He was 88.

“With the death of Bill Russell we have lost an iconic Olympic champion and one of the greatest basketball players in history. He always stood up for the Olympic values. My thoughts are with his family, his friends and the basketball community,” said International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach.

The Olympics were important to Bill Russell. Russell delayed his NBA career and turned down a lucrative contract from the Harlem Globetrotters for the opportunity to participate in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics.

Avery Brundage, who was head of the IOC at the time, argued Russell had already signed a professional sport contract and was no longer an amateur sportsman, but Russell prevailed and was able to play in the Melbourne Olympics.

“Ever since I was a kid, there were social and physical icons that I always heard about. And you think of these things in awe. And when I got to the age where I qualified for the Olympics, I wanted to go,” Russell said. “Then, the honor of the Olympics was to compete. Not to win, but to compete. I really wanted that. If I hadn’t made that Olympic basketball team, I was going to participate in the high jump. I was ranked second in the country in the high jump, so either way, I was going to Melbourne. I wanted to be a part of that Olympic experience.”

Russell captained the 1956 U.S. men’s basketball team in Australia. The 1956 squad still stands as the most dominant team in Olympic history - winning by an average of 53.5 points per game. The team went 8-0 and defeated the Soviet Union 89–55 in the gold medal final. Russell led the U.S. with a team-high 14.1 points per game.

It was the United States’ fourth consecutive gold medal in men’s basketball since the sport was introduced to Olympic Games competition at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games.

“The gold medal is very, very, very precious to me,” Russell said in an interview for NBC’s Olympic Show in 1999. “In terms of trophies and things, it’s probably my most prized possession.”

‘Trophies and things’ - were just that to Bill Russell.

Although his long list of accolades reads like fiction - 13x NBA champ (2 as a coach), 5x league MVP, 2x NCAA champ, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the first black head coach of a North American pro sports franchise - what mattered was character and the journey of achievement.

“To me, the most important part of winning is joy. You can win without joy, but winning that’s joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you’re not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.”

As a black pioneer on many societal fronts - racism shaped his lifelong paradigm as a team player, about which Russell said:

“At that time it was never acceptable that a black player was the best. That did not happen ... My junior year in college, I had what I thought was the one of the best college seasons ever. We won 28 out of 29 games. We won the National Championship. I was the MVP at the Final Four. I was first team All American. I averaged over 20 points and over 20 rebounds, and I was the only guy in college blocking shots. So after the season was over, they had a Northern California banquet, and they picked another center as Player of the Year in Northern California. Well, that let me know that if I were to accept these as the final judges of my career I would die a bitter old man.”

Russell’s self awareness, selflessness and humility helped shape his career. When he was named the first black head coach of a pro sports franchise he stated:

“What’s more important than who’s going to be the first black manager is who’s going to be the first black sports editor of the New York Times.”

Russell’s holistic approach in competition was how he affected the collective impact on winning.

“The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”