William Felton Russell is an American former professional basketball player. He played center for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association from 1956 to 1969. A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a 12-time All-Star, he was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty that won eleven NBA championships during his 13-year career. Russell led the San Francisco Dons to two consecutive NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956, and he captained the gold-medal winning U.S. national basketball team at the 1956 Summer Olympics.
About Bill Russell in brief
William Felton Russell is an American former professional basketball player. He played center for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association from 1956 to 1969. A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a 12-time All-Star, he was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty that won eleven NBA championships during his 13-year career. Russell led the San Francisco Dons to two consecutive NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956, and he captained the gold-medal winning U.S. national basketball team at the 1956 Summer Olympics. In 2011, Barack Obama awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his accomplishments on the court and in the Civil Rights Movement. Russell is one of seven players in history to win an NCAA Championship, an NBA Championship, and an Olympic gold medal. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall Of Fame. In Russell’s honor the NBA renamed the NBA Finals Most Val valuable Player trophy in 2009: it is now the Bill Russell NBA Finals most Valuable player Award. He is 6 ft 10 in tall, with a 7 ft 4 in wingspan. Russell played in the wake of black pioneers Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Sweetwater Clifton. He led the NBA in rebounds four times, had a dozen consecutive seasons of 1,000 or more rebounds, and remains second all-time in both total rebounds and rebounds per game. He also served a three-season stint as player-coach for the Celtics, becoming the first black coach in North American professional sports and the first to win a championship.
Russell was born in 1934 to Charles Russell and Katie Russell in Monroe, Louisiana. When Russell was eight years old, his father moved the family out of Louisiana and settled in Oakland, California. While there, they fell into poverty, and Russell spent his childhood living in a series of public housing projects. Russell has stated that his father became his childhood hero, and became his hero, later followed by Minneapolis Lakers superstar George Mikan. As a high school freshman, Russell did not understand the game and was cut from the junior team. Russell struggled to develop his skills as a basketball player, and had large hands and large hands, which made it difficult for him to make the high school varsity basketball team. When he was 12 years old he became a steelworker and became a semi-orphan. When World War II broke out, the elder Russell became a truck driver. Russell became closer to his mother Katie than he was to his father. His father gave up his trucking job and became a steel worker to be closer to him. Russell’s father gave him a job in a paper factory as a janitor, which was a typical \”Negro Job\”—low paid and not intellectually challenging, as sports journalist John Taylor commented. In 2009, Russell was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996, one of only four players to receive all three honors.
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