RealGM

Hi there people,

I've been reading this board for the last 15 years, since I created a RealGM account, but didn't post since 2006.

Just wanted to let a huge thank you to all the great people that make this board the best place in the whole internet to discuss NBA history.

Just recently I finished reading, for the 2nd time, Bill Russell's book "Second Wind".

It's such an amazing book. To get a grip on his perspective of the sport is something enlightening for me, I learned so much from it.

Did anyone else here read this book? What are your recollections of it?

Greetings to all.

Haven't read it but might look into it. Russell is a very thoughtful guy so he's probably a pretty good writer as well.

I haven't read but I want to. It's been on my list for a while.

Russell is definitely one of the most fascinating people in NBA history!

Just wanted to say: Haven't read it, but feel like I should have.

If you have any particular passages or insights from the read that stood out to you, I'd love to heard about them.

Sure.

The first thing that striked me was how difficult to find this book: when I got it, around 2013/2014, it was out of print. I had to find an used copy via Ebay, I think, and had it delivered here to Brazil.

And man... the book was definitely old. It was printed in 1979 or 1980. But it was an awesome reading experience, I read it in like 4 days. So, by the time he wrote it, he was already retired for quite a few years.

Russell talks about many things, his upbringing, his family, how his father shaped him to be the person he was, his college coach, his wife (which he admitedly and openly was infidel, saying that very casually), his time in Boston, and so on.

He spends a lot of time talking about his teammates, and much more talking about Red Auerbach. He absolutely adored Red, there were many, many compliments about him, his friendship (which is more detailed in the book "Red & Me", if I'm not mistaken).

Plus, he talks about how is life as a NBA player, off the court. The pressure, the fame. How lots of players, once they reach this level, don't care for improvement, either by being satisfied for what they already got (a contract, a certain status as a player, etc), or by being taken away, slowly but surely, from other issues.

Like, there was a guy who was a very good player, liked to practice, was liked by his teammates, definitely seem to care about what he did for a living, but had so much going on outside the team, like pressure for money from friends (or "friends"), pressure for a certain lifestyle from the family he provided, that all of this took a damage on his day-to-day activities.

Bill Bradley talks more about this on one of his books, called "Life on the Run". Awesome book too, highly recommended.

Another thing that left me much intrigued to read was when Russell talked about the verticality of the game. I believe there was a thread, made last week, on the General Board, where someone wrote about this in depth.

have read it multiple times too.incredible insightful on many levels.his talk about "the secret" is one of the best points about the deeper layers of the game of basketball i have ever seen.russell comes across as so much more than a mere basketball player and really is "an opinionated man" as the title suggests.just the goat and its not close at all...other may be surely better at putting ball through hoop but as explained in there thats exactly what its not all about.just a must read for understanding success,basketball,celtics,russell and a key experience for debunking the athletes equals stupidity theory.