Go Up for Glory

by Bill Russell

When it seems like nothing to you, don’t count on the fact that it is nothing for the boy. It might be very important.

The days are gone when a student was a big man on the campus and easily recognizable and identified with the school. You take a campus of 25,000 now. Who knows the guy who plays on the football team? So, just hire pros and forget it. Stop hiding behind the guise of intellectual amateurism and do something decent for these kids. Like sending them forth into the world equipped to deal with it, not just as poor, mixed-up, sometimes fat-headed athletes. Unless this is done, or some similar action taken, there will be more and more scandals and our young people will feel more and more sorry for the big star who gets caught.

Woolpert wrote back a letter saying that he never praised me because I had too much going for me to need that sort of thing. The hell I didn’t. Anyone wants to be told they are doing a good job. Anyone wants the support of his coach and this is a lesson coaches should learn in any sport and at any level. It never hurts to say a good word for your player.

Brown was a hockey buff. It was his greatest love. But he was a sportsman too. He wouldn’t believe the sport couldn’t survive and he poured every single dime he had into it. He lost every cent. The Boston Garden decided to discontinue basketball, so Brown bought the team himself. His money went and went and went. This has to be the greatest story in the history of professional sports. One man and a few friends going against the tide, refusing to pack it in, and winding up with the greatest world championship streak on record.

I wrote some controversial articles, but I believed them at the time. I was talking human rights before it was popular.

This is an innocent approach. But it is a form of prejudice, a form of pigeonholing. All Negroes are supposed to know all other Negroes. Why?

I didn’t say a word for the press. Afterwards, I took him aside and said: “Mr. Brown, I have too much respect for you to ever argue with you in public. But there is a quota. And I have purposely gone out on a limb about it because I figure it will take the heat off the owners. All the fans will be too busy hating me and too busy trying to prove there isn’t a quota to pay any attention while you owners do away with it.”

As a man and as a coach, Auerbach never does anything without a reason. I have never seen him have an accident of any kind in his dealings with individuals, in business or in the world of sports.

Only through candor does understanding come about.

The only thing you can do is make the cost of being a bigot just that—costly. I try. It cost them on the tour. Regrettably, it cost me, too. But it was worth it. Success in having all Americans just that—all Americans—will only come when the cost of being a bigot becomes too high to pay.

To categorize it, look at defense on this basis: (1) Learn the other man’s habits. Then make him go exactly opposite to what he likes to do. (2) When he gets to a position where he is away from his best shot, even if it’s only a foot, make him commit himself and shoot and count on the law of averages being on your side.

There can be no neutrals in the battle for human rights. If you are for the status quo, then you are against the rights of man, because you are afraid to rock the boat.

Instead, we are treading water. Ten years from now, we will have lost ground and will be forced to fight again and it will be harder, much more difficult, because the old methods will no longer work.

Everyone is born with a prejudice. Every man is born with a fear. It comes to us at birth’s first breath. It leaves us only when we understand and conquer it.

I was MVP that year. But we didn’t win the title. I was still fighting.

Under pressure, a great player will always go to his best shot. Baylor’s best shot was to drive, sink the ball and pick up a charging foul for the extra point. I would come to his front and he would go around me. But Elgin’s best shot also meant that he had to go to his right. He never goes to his left. I had him dead. He was coming down on me, faking, bobbing, but I knew what his play would be. He would go to his greatness. I went to his front so it would appear he could go around and then took a step and a half to the left at the same moment he cut. He banged right into me. And now the long eternity of waiting began. Powers was blowing his whistle. I had tricked Baylor into a charge. But what if Powers called it the other way? Baylor shot the ball as he banged into me. It had gone through the hoop. A foul call against us makes it a three-pointer for him and they win. Seconds . . . hours . . . years . . . and now Powers made the sign: Charging. No basket. Our ball. Our world championship.

As I stood in the doorway, I couldn’t resist it. I raised the magnum and bowed and said: “As the sun sinks slowly in the west we bid farewell to Los Angeles . . . the basketball capital of the world.” We exited laughing.

The only prima donna on the team is Auerbach.

Heinsohn. Will you please stop shooting the ball and pass?”

A man should not be against something until he has studied it.

I believe one of the problems is misinformation . . . misunderstanding. Americans, oddly enough, are generally uninformed about each other.

I may be wrong, but I have always felt that the church must lead. But, alas, it has followed. None of the breakthroughs in this struggle were initiated by the church. It was only after little people started it that the forces of the church—all churches, all religions—came to bear.

But I believe I can be a businessman. And businessmen form pressure groups. I know from my own experience that the chairman of any large company is on a first-name basis with the chairmen of at least twenty-five other firms. When he meets with them, when they plan political support, their words—and the thrust of the economy they control—carry force, carry influence.