Bill Russell
Bill Russell
William Felton "Bill" Russellis an American retired professional basketball player. Russell played center for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Associationfrom 1956 to 1969. A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a twelve-time All-Star, he was the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty, winning eleven NBA championships during his thirteen-year career. Along with Henri Richard of the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens, Russell holds the record for the most championships won by an athlete in a North American sports league...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth12 February 1934
CityWest Monroe, LA
CountryUnited States of America
Bill Russell quotes about
I think what has happened to our basketball team, we've been badly distracted. They're not reading too many positive things in the paper.
Don't knock the ball in the stands, keep it in your hands!
Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.
The last five or six days, I've been running. The last two days, I've been running pretty hard. Everybody's got to be someplace.
If you can take something to levels that very few other people can reach, then what you're doing becomes art.
Create unselfishness as the most important team attribute.
We overreached our decision power. Sometimes our decisions have to fit the reality of the outside world.
We learn to make a shell for ourselves when we are young and then spend the rest of our lives hoping for someone to reach inside and touch us. Just touch us—anything more than that would be too much for us to bear.
The morale and the camaraderie that we had for one another earlier in the year is starting to come under duress because of all the losses. Some of the guys are feeling the pressure now from the last year when they were not successful.
People say it was the greatest individual rivalry they've ever seen. I agree with that. Let me assure you that if either Wilt's or Russ' coach had ever told one of them he couldn't guard the other guy, he would have lost that player forever.
The most important thing to me is the friends that I've made.
My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work.
I think that David Stern is probably the greatest commissioner that any sport has ever had in the history of this country.
I hope I epitomize the American dream. For I came against long odds, from the ghetto to the very top of my profession. I was not immediately good at basketball. It did not come easy. It came as the result of a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice. The rewards, where they worth it? One thousand times over.