GreenHat wrote:They want you to recognize how much better his team is than everyone without accounting for how good his teams were minus him.
Slater Martin: “Boston just wasn’t much of a team until Russell showed up.”
Ed Macauley: “We played them a couple of times when Russell wasn’t in the lineup, and they were an ordinary club. With him, they were just superb.”
Bob Cousy: “We can win without me or Bill Sharman or Tom Heinsohn, but we can’t do it without Big Bill” (
The New York Times, Mar 8, 1961).
“Without Bob Cousy or Tom Heinsohn or Bill Sharman the Boston Celtics are still the world’s greatest basketball team. Without Bill Russell they can be beaten” (
The Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 25, 1962).
If anyone doubts the value of Bill Russell to the Boston Celtics, the performance of the three-time National Basketball Association champs in the last four games may change their mind.
Russell, considered the best defensive player in the game, has missed the last four games because of a foot injury and the Celtics have lost every one.
Their four game losing streak matches their longest since March, 1957, and has cut their Eastern Division lead from 10 to six games.
February 2, Russell suffered severely sprained ligaments in his right knee in a 95-94 loss to New York at Boston Garden. With New York leading 95-92, Russell was the recipient of a pass and scored on a layup. He fell hard to the floor and writhed in pain as the Knicks ran out the last 12 seconds.
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Television’s most publicized sports rhubarb of the season came when NBC-TV cut away from the end of a New York Jets football game to start a special program, “Heidi.”
But Sunday ABC-TV, whose notable sports department has many achievements to its credit, made an on-the-air decision that may be more significant in terms of coverage—and was regrettable to fans who have come to admire the network’s genuine interest in athletics.
The decision came at the end of ABC-TV’s weekly professional basketball game, this one between the Boston Celtics and New York Knickerbockers. Right before action ended, Boston’s great player-coach, Bill Russell, took a long pass, rammed it through the basket—and then fell to the floor, hard.
As the game ended, he remained there, his knee severely whacked, and as the camera properly moved in on him, one could see the pitiful sight of Russell in obvious agony, a heart-rending picture. For basketball fans, and for just ordinary televiewers, it was a simple matter of human concern.
One of the announcers made the correct statement that although New York had won the game, the real story was there on the floor: Russell. What the announcer was talking about was the implication in regard to the league race—and also the human story concerning Russell, the most dominant figure in the history of professional basketball.
Boston lost five straight, their longest losing streak since the 1949-50 season. Russell returned February 9, 1969 against the 76ers, helped them overcome a 10-point deficit, blocked two shots and then dunked a shot with two seconds remaining to tie the game and send it into overtime, where after the Celtics took the lead he had made a key free throw and a key steal to preserve it as Boston won 122-117.
all MVP talk about Reed, Frazier, Cunningham and Unseld aside, Russell is the man who could bring Boston back. After Russell's magnificent posthospital game against the 76ers, Havlicek told The Boston Globe : "It's a damn shame you have to place so much of a load on one person. They keep saying this guy is the key, that guy is the key. There's only one key—him [Russell]—and he's only human, like everybody else."
Of course, don't let the facts get in the way or anything.
