Bill Russell, the Man – The Wall Street Journal

He was a man. This is what Bill Russell sought as his epitaph; He said it himself in the closing sentence of his crushingly pointed 1966 autobiography, “Go Up for Glory.” That book remains one the greatest sports books ever written—brutally candid about his profession, teammates, coaches, and the Black experience in America, and published when he was still an active basketball star, if you want to know how worried Bill Russell was about telling the truth. 

He was a man. It was not a declaration of modesty, but a demand of basic respect. Russell, who died Sunday at age 88, is inarguably one of the greatest athletes in the history of team sports, collecting 11 titles in 13 seasons with the Boston Celtics. But Russell’s essential legacy is his lifelong insistence on being rendered as a complete human being, with all rights, privileges, fears and frailties—“a man, nothing more,” as he put it more than five decades ago.