TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Russell on ESPN
• National Mentoring Partnership

E-mail a friend

Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome basketball legend, Bill Russell, to this program. He's one of the greatest players to ever play the game. He led the Boston Celtics to a staggering -- still staggering -- eleven NBA championships, eight in a row. Is there even a phrase for like -- how do you say "eightpeat"? I don't know. Next month, though, he kicks off a unique series for the Sundance Channel featuring one-on-one conversations with iconic figures from all walks of life. "Iconoclasts" premiers November 17 when Samuel L. Jackson pays a visit to Bill Russell.

Tavis: Bill Russell's got jokes. Who knew? How do you doing? Nice to see you.

Bill Russell: That introduction. You said -- I thought you put some limits on me.

Tavis: How'd I do that? I said eleven, eight in a row.

Russell: You said "one of the great basketball players (laughter)."

Tavis: Oh, my bad, my bad. Let's do that again. With eleven NBA championships, eight in a row. He is the greatest center to ever play the game of basketball.

Russell: You did it again, the center.

Tavis: Okay, one more time. Here we go. With eleven NBA championships, eight in a row, he is the greatest to ever play the game. Now my phone's ringing. That's Jordan calling me now. Now Jordan's calling me on the other line. Anyway, nice to have you here, man. Is it staggering to you when you look back on that, given that there's nobody's ever come close to that? Or do you get tired of hearing that all the time now?

Russell: No, it's like that was then and this is now. When we were doing that, there was no thought about what we were doing. We were just trying to win the next game. Like I tell people, two words we'd never used in the Celtics locker room: dynasty and luck. Those two words didn't have anything to do with what we were doing.

Tavis: Right. This may sound like a naïve question, but what was it then. If you weren't a dynasty and if it wasn't about luck, since you mentioned two words, what two words were used if there were two used consistently in your locker room? Give me two words to replace those two words in the locker room.

Russell: We're the best and we're willing to go out and show that.

Tavis: That works.

Russell: It's like one of my dear friends, Jerry West, played for the Lakers very well and we beat them in the finals six times and he said to me -- we were sitting together at a game, at a Laker game -- he says, "Bill, I don't understand that. I know there were times we had a better team and you guys always beat us. I don't understand how." I said, "For one thing, Jerry, the best team always wins (laughter)."

Tavis: (Laughter) That was real deep, Bill. That was real deep. Yeah, the best team always wins.

Russell: Well, the reason I say that is, we're guys and all of our accomplishments had to be done within the framework of team play. So if you say Allen Iverson and the 76er's, there's a disconnect, although I love Allen because I was on the Board of Directors of Georgetown when he was an undergraduate and he's a really good guy. But the point I'm making is that you have to accomplish these things that define your career within the framework of team play.

Tavis: Since you mentioned that, let me just ask the obvious question. This begs to be asked and you've been asked before, but let me ask it though because I haven't had a chance to ask it. Is there too much individual play? Too much "I" these days in the league and not enough "team"?

Russell: No, no.

Tavis: You don't believe that.

Russell: No, really, and I'll tell you why it's not.

Tavis: All right. I want to hear this.

Russell: The guys are playing the way they're coached. Of course, all these coaches have "systems", so they have to play within that system. If the system calls for a lot of one-on-one things, that's the way they have to play. You see, like a lot of times, these guys will have good fundamentals. They say, yeah, but they don't have good fundamentals, they don't have good fundamentals. I started playing organized basketball at nine. I get to the Celtics at twenty-two. If I don't have any fundamentals by that time, I have been failed by my coaches because all these guys practically in the NBA were prodigies. If in their growing up in this game, if they don't have fundamentals, then they have been failed by their coaches all on the line.

Tavis: Are these "systems" -- because there are a variety of them, but obviously when one system works, everybody wants to emulate it -- so are these two, three, four systems in the NBA bad for the game?

Russell: I think so. I'll tell you why.

Tavis: Okay.

Russell: Because there's a reason for that. Because of expansion, everybody can't win, so coaches have to coach not to lose. They can't coach to win. They got to coach not to lose because if you coach them to lose, then you're out of a job. So they develop a system like one-size-fit-all. All the players are interchangeable. Well, if you do that, there'll be players with certain skills. One player I'll think of -- I won't name him -- at his position, he's the best passer in the league. His system doesn't call for him passing at all.

Tavis: Jason Kidd?

Russell: No, no. Like I said, I'm not going to name him (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) You said the best passer in the league, I just put Kidd. I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead.

Russell: I'm one of the few people that knows how good a passer he is because, when I watch the game. I watch for skill sets and what the players are trying to do and how well they accomplish it, you see. I don't just look at so he got thirty points. You know, in 1947 the NBA was a league for the first time. Since then, there have only been two teams that have been in the same city all those years: the New York Knickerbockers and the Boston Celtics. The Boston Celtics have never had a league scoring champion, but we had sixteen championships. I played for the Celtics thirteen years. I never once led the Celtics in scoring.

Tavis: Didn't matter to you, though, did it?

Russell: No, because what I did when I played was try to take and assess properly my skills, and which of those should I emphasize to help my team win games. So after my first year, I was always second on the team in assists.

Tavis: Let me take you back to something you said a moment ago, because you said something that was really profound that I don't want to miss. And for those who may not be the fan of the NBA or basketball that I am or some of our other viewers are, they might have missed it. What is the distinction, the difference, between playing to win and playing not to lose? It's a brilliant point, but what's the distinction?

Russell: Well, before every decision is made, it looks like he said, "What if that doesn't work?" You know, what's the worst case scenario? So you coach that way. Just like using the zone defense, you start from the supposition that nobody can play defense. So we got to start by playing zone defense to protect all these guys who can't play defense.

Tavis: Man-to-man.

Russell: I know that, when I was playing, my greatest competitor was Wilt Chamberlain, also my friend. If his coach had told him, "I'm not going to let you guard Russell because it'll make you too foul trouble", Wilt would have been the sixties (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) You know, there's a book out called "The Rivalry" about you and Chamberlain.

Russell: Well, see, I don't know anything about it because I didn't participate in the writing of it.

Tavis: Well, I think it's called "The Rivalry" if I got it right. It's about the rivalry between the two of you. Let me ask you, that book notwithstanding, whether or not that is the greatest rivalry in all of professional sport.

Russell: No, because it was not a rivalry.

Tavis: How do you classify it then?

Russell: Competition. See, in a rivalry, there's a victor and the vanquished. Nobody in this situation was vanquished. We played the same position entirely different ways and both of us were hugely successful at this. I never felt one day that he was vanquished and that's the essence of a rivalry.

Tavis: Did you get up for those games against Wilt?

Russell: Yes.

Tavis: More than others?

Russell: Yes. You know why, though? Not because of -- because he was so good, if you didn't get up, you'd get your -- (laughter).

Tavis: I understand, yeah.

Russell: If you show up half-stepping, you would be -- you know, he got fifty-five rebounds against me one night. Fifty-five.

Tavis: That's impossible to get fifty-five against you.

Russell: Bad shooting (laughter). But if you go out there against a great player, not ready to play, like one of the biggest jokes I used to have is I always remember that picture of Willis Reed limping out to play against Wilt in the championship.

Tavis: Absolutely.

Russell: And he came out and hit the first two shots and they went on to win the game. I was standing between the two of them one night and I told Willis, "If you had came out to play against me dragging one leg, the most difficult thing for me is not to walk up and just slap the crap out of you." He said, "Why?" I said, "If you're going to come out to play me on one leg, what do you think of my game, that you can come and play against me on one leg?" (laughter).

Tavis: Since you've left the game, do you ever pick up a ball anymore? Do you shoot a round?

Russell: No. In fact, the last time I played basketball was at the Munich Olympics in 1972. I took my kids to the Olympic Games and we were over in Munich over a month. My oldest son was in high school and he was playing basketball every day and he was beating people and he got to feeling pretty good about himself. He says, "You want to play me one-on-one?" I said, "No, son, I don't play basketball anymore." A couple of days go by, "Are you sure you don't want to play me?" "No, son, I told you I don't play basketball anymore." "You're not scared?" "No, son, I'm not afraid." "I think you're scared."

He goes on like this for a few days and I say, "Okay, I'll play you, but there's only one condition. No spectators." He said, "Why? You afraid you'll be embarrassed?" I said, "Listen, if you want to play, that's the condition. Now if you don't want to agree with that, we just won't play." "Okay." So I go to the Olympic team and borrow a pair of basketball shoes from one of the players because I didn't have any shoes. So we found this very out-of-the-way basketball court and we go out there. I said, "How many baskets are we going to play to?" He said, "Twenty-one." Well, you and I know that it's usually eleven. He figured he was in shape and I wasn't, so with twenty-one, he's got a better chance of wearing me down.

Tavis: Eleven, straight up or by two?

Russell: Twenty-one, whoever the first one gets there.

Tavis: Okay, so by one. Got it.

Russell: Yes. Then you just got to play cleared out. That means, if I shoot and miss, he gets rebound and can go to the top and start over.

Tavis: We still do that now.

Russell: So then, I said, "Here, take it out." He said, "Don't you want to flip for it?" I said, "No, you take it out, son." So after I got nineteen and nothing, I said, "I'm going to let you score twice." He said, "Why?" I said, "Just go ahead." So he scores twice and then I finished the game. Then came the really interesting part of the deal. First he says, "I didn't know you were that good." (laughter)

Tavis: (Laughter) Do you read?

Russell: I said, "Listen, son, you do realize that I was five times MVP in the NBA and I was in the finals twelve times and won eleven times. So what you endeavored to do was go past all your high school teammates and classmates, go past all the college kids, go past all the NBA players to get to me. No, no, no." (laughter) So he said, "Well, why'd you let me score twice?" I said, "Well, couple of reasons. First, I didn't want you to leave here telling everybody how mean I was to you, that I skunked you. And second, now you can go over and tell people, hell, I scored twice on Bill Russell." (laughter)

Tavis: As I sit here talking to you -- and I've had the occasion to do this before, at least once or twice, as I sit here talking to you and listening to you and just get caught up in the aura of your personality, it's never lost to me that you lost your mother when you were twelve. Your father or somebody did a great job with you, but what do you think you missed most by not having your mother around all these years?

Russell: Well, I was fortunate enough to have her around enough so that I can still hear her talking to me.

Tavis: Even now?

Russell: Even now. You know, like I'll be walking around thinking about something and I'll hear her say something that she said to me when I was five years old. I was fortunate that, you know, one day all of us wake up and we know that we're alive, then we start to know things. Well, the first thing that I ever knew that I was alive and everything was that my mother and father loved me. My mother used to say things to me all the time that were creative. I lived in a cocoon, so to speak. I lived one of the most sheltered lives you could ever imagine because my folks, I think in a very intelligent way and a very comprehensive way, protected me without me knowing I was being protected so that I would have a sense of self-worth. They just loved me because you're super, but they also protected me from a lot of things that could have been harmful.

Tavis: I don't want to cast dispersions on parents across the board today, but I wonder whether or not you think that, whether in a single parent household or in a household where there are both parents, that kids today are expressing or saying to us that they are not being loved in the way that you were.

Russell: Well, you know, I was a single parent with a twelve year old girl. First days we were together, her brothers were in a different place, I said to her, "I don't know anything about twelve year old girls and a lot of things are going to happen to you in the next couple years and I don't have the slightest idea of what to do about it. I'll just make you two promises. I will love you and, when you leave here, you'll be better able to take care of yourself than any man you'll ever meet."

I had conversations with her, I respected her and I always treated her with respect and I always treated her as a female because there is no one-size-fits-all, especially between boys and girls. First, I had to let her know that she was special and that I loved her and that all I wanted was the best in the world for her. Philosophically, I think, that the love between a parent and child is a love that grows toward separation.

Tavis: A love that grows toward separation.

Russell: Exactly. What you do in those first twenty years, you got to try to prepare them for a life without you. Although you may be in their lives for the next fifty or sixty years, but later they have to live in a world without you, and to try to make that transition. Don't send them out there with no tools.

Tavis: So did you keep your promise to her? Did you prepare her to take care of herself better than any man ever could?

Russell: Well, she was a four-point student at high school, she went to Georgetown as an undergraduate and she graduated from Harvard Law School.

Tavis: End of subject (laughter). End of conversation on that.

Russell: There's a picture that we have of the day she graduated from the law school and we're standing together and I got all my pockets turned inside out (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) Let me take you back again to something else you said before my time runs out here. You mentioned Allen Iverson earlier in our conversation. You love his skills. I love his game. But he's in the news of late, of course, because when Mr. Stern, the Commissioner of the NBA, announced this new dress code. What he's calling business casual, slacks, a shirt with a collar. AI, I've seen everywhere, is one of the persons in the league complaining about the new dress code. Have you heard about this code? What's your sense of what Mr. Stern has done here?

Russell: Well, you see, what you got to do is -- well, nothing you have to do, but what I would do, I would try to keep things in context. For years and years and then some years at the NBA office dress code, everybody there is shirt and tie and all that stuff. I mean, this is not last year. This is maybe twenty years ago. Always been that way. So now David, who I happen to have an enormous amount of respect for, that's part of his psyche. Also, you can also look at Iverson, that it's a cultural thing. Now anybody that's lived more than three years in this country knows race is important.

Tavis: It doesn't take three years to figure that out, but --

Russell: And there are cultural differences because if I say, a guy my age, like one of the kids I went to college with at USF, if he sees the world the same way I see it, one of us needs to get professional help because they're not wrapped too tight. You see, maybe I've lived too long because I've seen a lot of things. One case that the Jesuits told me when I was a freshman in college was, whenever you encounter anything, consider the source, okay? In other words, when you come into a situation, it exists. It's neither good, bad, right or wrong, black or white or whatever. It is. What makes the difference is, what is your take on it and what are you going to do about it?

Tavis: Well, Stern got his take. AI and others have their take. But Stern has an image problem. NBA, his point is, we got an image problem here and, after this brawl, we got to clean this mess up and it starts at least with you all projecting the right kind of image.

Russell: Well, that may be the case. I'm not so sure I believe that.

Tavis: Well, I'm just saying his point of view.

Russell: You see, I'm in a funny place when it comes to this kind of stuff. I was the first modern professional athlete to wear a beard. So when I got to Boston, I had not started shaving yet, and there were more questions about me were why would I have on a beard than how was I going to play.

Tavis: How's he going to play with a beard?

Russell: You know, it's like, "Well, you shouldn't have a beard." I'd say, "Well, why not?" "Well, you don't look like the rest of the guys." I got a clue for you. In my first championship series, I was the only black player on either team, so there was no way I was going to look like the rest of them (laughter).

Tavis: On that note, and he still stands out these many years later. I'm out of time. I could do this for like days. Anyway, "Iconoclasts" on -- what channel is this on? Sundance Channel. I forgot. Got caught up in the conversation. Nice to have you here. Good to see you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local radio listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.