Word Pictures of Russ and Wilt

Billy Cunningham: “Wilt and Russell were to basketball what Arnold Palmer was to golf. Turn on the television on Sunday and there they were: Wilt vs. Russell. They brought their sport into the living rooms of America, just as Palmer did with golf. They were individually bigger than the game. It was never Boston vs. Philly or Boston vs. L.A.; it was Wilt vs. Russell. You have to realize that the dunk as we know it – the scary power play it can be – started with Chamberlain. And the great defensive player, the man capable of stopping the dunk – that was Russell. They are the two greatest talents to ever play the game. When you were on the court with them, they so dominated that you’d find yourself stopping just to watch them. I’ve never had that feeling with any two other players.”

Tom Meschery: “We’re talking about classic duels, like two huge dinosaurs going at each other. It was almost cataclysmic, as if they were about to fight to the death. Not that they were dirty. They never actually fought each other, but it was a basketball war between two great gladiators. You can talk about Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson or Magic vs. Michael Jordan, but the difference is that those guys never actually covered each other. But Wilt vs. Russell, both centers, both went at it hammer and tongs.”

Wayne Embry: “What made it fun to watch those guys was that everyone knew there was no love between them. Off the court, they got along back then, but they wanted to beat each other more than anything in the world.”

Norm Drucker: “I worked 25 Russell-Chamberlain matchups and I never saw one cheap shot between them, and neither ever said a word to the officials.”

Wilt Chamberlain: “I give the Celtics and Russell credit. I think they had a great coach in Auerbach. They had great talent and Russell was the best clutch rebounder this game has ever seen. But they also seemed to be lucky. They’d beat us in the most amazing ways – Havlicek steals the ball, I got called for dubious goaltending, on and on it went.”

John Havlicek: “When you played with Russell, you knew exactly what to expect from him each night. But Wilt, he was liable to decide, “Tonight I’m going to score 60 . . . or tonight, I’m getting 40 rebounds . . . or 20 assists.” He was preoccupied with answering people who said he couldn’t do things – that he couldn’t pass or that his rebounding was down. He’d have a great stat game, but his team would lose. It was as if he had an ax to grind with the press, whereas Russell never let himself get caught up in that.”

Hot Rod Hundley: “The comparisons with Russell got to Wilt. He told me, “We win a game and I never hear anyone say, “Old Wilty won it.’” Wilt called himself Wilty. Then Wilt said, “But when we lost, all I ever heard was how Wilty lost it. And when the Celtics lose, Russell didn’t lose, the Celtics did. That’s not fair.” Wilt would go home at night, knowing he had outscored and outrebounded Russell, but the Celtics won. It was as if he’d won the battle, but Russell won the war.”

Charley Eckman: “Wilt was the strongest man ever to play basketball, but he always took a fallaway jumper. It was the damndest thing. He played basketball the hard way. For that reason alone, he couldn’t carry Russell’s jock. If Wilt had consistently driven to the basket, he’d have scored 200 in a game.”

Bob Cousy: “Wilt can say what he wants, but the fallaway bank is a result of playing against Russell. Wilt could overpower every other center, but Russell took away his drive. So Wilt countered with his outside shot, and Russell countered by pushing Wilt farther and farther from the basket – often, out of range of his jump shot. If he tried to dribble it, we could swarm Wilt and steal his dribble. The one area where he could push Russell aside was when Wilt went after an offensive rebound. That was when he was the strongest.”

Jerry Lucas: “Wilt was too consumed with records: being the first center to lead the league in assists, or to set a record for field goal percentage. He’d accomplish one individual goal, and then go on to another. Russell only asked himself one question: “What can I do to make us win.”

Slater Martin: “Boston just wasn’t much of a team until Russell showed up. They couldn’t guard anybody. Take Cousy, who never was a good defensive player. With Russell, he never had to worry about guarding anyone, and he never did. If his man drove by Cousy, he’d just run down the other end of the court knowing that Russell would get the rebound and throw one of those great outlet passes for him. Russell would play with your head. After a while, you just stopped driving on the guy.”

Jack Twyman: “Russell was the greatest impact player in any sport. He couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean, but he allowed his teammates to press and gamble. You knew that if you got by Cousy or Heinsohn, that SOB Russell was back there waiting to block your shot. No one ever dominated a sport the way Russell did with the Celtics.”

Nate Thurmond: “You just can’t say that because Bill won 11 championships, he was far superior to the rest of us centers in that era. He was a great player, but also in a great situation.”

Rod Thorn: “Wilt looked at the game as an individual. He’d think, “I got my 50 points and my 25 rebounds, and if that’s not enough, it’s not my fault. You can blame those SOBs over there.”

Al Attles: “As an example of the difference between Wilt’s teams and the Celtics was one night in the playoffs. Boston had the last shot to win the game. Who took it? Not Russell. It was Sam Jones who beat us. They had five guys on the court who could have taken that shot.”

Tom Heinsohn: “If you go strictly by the record book, then you’ve got to say that Chamberlain was the greatest player in basketball history. The 50-point a game average, the 100-point game, all the rebounds, even the assists. But as great as Wilt was, he couldn’t beat us. That’s because Russell was the fulcrum of a team effort – he covered for us and we covered for him.

“I’ve heard Wilt say, “If I had all those guys around me like Russell did, then I’d have won all those championships.” I don’t buy that. First, it is difficult to measure Russell’s value in statistics. I believe he was worth 50-60 points a game for us. There was the 15 or so he scored. Then all the blocked shots, the intimidation on defense in the form of shots missed because they thought Bill would block it. He changed entire teams’ offenses, and he was the starting point of our fast-break offense. How can you put a number on what that’s worth to a team?

“As for Wilt, Russell used different tactics on him. Sometimes, he played Wilt tight, other times he gave Wilt room. But we helped Russell on Wilt. We respected Wilt and we were quick to double-team. Wilt also had two major weaknesses. First, he didn’t want to be known as some tall, freaky player, so he used the fallaway jumper. But when he missed, he was in no position to rebound. We’d get the ball off the boards and beat him down to the other end of the court for a fast-break layup.

“Second, Wilt was a poor foul shooter. Our rule was that if Wilt got by Russell, we should just clobber him and put him at the line. Missing the free throws would frustrate Wilt.

“Wilt was a great player. But he was there to be an individual, to draw fans and be the center of attention. I believe he liked that role, while Russell was more comfortable blending in and winning.”

Spike, it's quite amazing that you posted on this subject at this moment. TJ and I had just been discussing Wilt off the board—but in comparison to Kareem Abdul Jabbar rather than Russ. But the conclusions about Wilt were pretty much the same. His magnificent physical skills were too frequently offset by his quirky personality and attitude. The name of the game against Wilt was to get him frustrated, and he was usually finished for the night.

He seemed to march in a straight line all the time. If he missed a fallaway, he'd keep shooting fallaways as if to convince himself that he could make them. As you said,if he was scoring well, he kept focusing on scoring, while his teammates were becoming numbed. If he got a little frustrated, it was almost a sure thing that he was going to become more, rather than less, frustrated. When Wilt decided he would win the assist title, he didn't top until he had won it. Wilt seemed to set goals and go ferociously after them, and everything else be damned.

He once told Sam Jones (I think it was over an early dinner at Wilt's place on game day) that he was going to put Sam down that night if Sam scored a jumper over him and said, "Too late."

So, on the first two plays of the game, Auerbach called for Sam to open the game, go behind a screen, and shoot a short jumper over Wilt. Sam made the shot on those first two plays of the game.

So Auerbach called for the play a third time. Sam never left the floor and awoke to find Wilt standing over him." "Are you gonna get up?" asked Wilt. "Not tonight," replied Sam.

So they helped Sam back to the huddle; and, humanitarian that he was, Red called the same play again. "Not me," said Sam. "Let Cousy or somebody do it."

That was just like Wilt. He'd get something into his mind while losing focus on everything else. And all Russ had to do was plant the seed of frustration or doubt in Wilt's mind. Pushing him out just beyond his comfort zone and then asking Wilt, "Having a little trouble with the turnaround tonight, Big Guy?" Or sidling up to Wilt during a stoppage of time and whispering, "The guys don't seem to be feeding you the ball tonight. Are they mad at you?" There's absolutely no question that Wilt was the bull and Russ the matador.

I find it hard to believe that those sorts of subtleties happen on the court today. I expect it's more of a testosterone battle out there. Or maybe they're just formalized the subtleties, like when someone overplays a guy toward his shooting hand.

In the "For what it's worth" department, TJ and I wound up agreeing that, while Wilt may have been a beast, we'd both prefer to have Kareem on our team. The main difference for me was that I felt Kareem was never, never a quitter, but Wilt could, in essence, "quit" by allowing his tunnel vision to compromise what was best for his team.

Sam

Sam and Spike-

I don't think it's a coincidence that when the Lakers won in '72, after failing to get over the hump the previous three years despite the presence of Wilt, West and Baylor on the team, the biggest factor was Wilt changing his game (at the urging of BIll Sharman) to become a defensive-oriented player who concentrated defense and rebounding. He had the lowest scoring average of his career, and yet it resulted in a championship.

Why ? Because Wilt finally learned how to play like Russ. Ironic that after so many battles, Wilt's greatest team success (NBA championship and a 33 game winning streak) came after he modeled his game on that of his old nemesis.

Three cheers for BIll Sharman. That's some serious coaching.

BSH,

That advice came naturally to Sharman. As a player, he was certainly best known for his shooting, but he was also a hard-nosed (I mean "punch you in the mouth" hard-nosed) defensive stud. He basically passed on his own philosophy to Wilt, and it obviously worked.

When the Lakers won that Championship, I don't recall any significant display of happiness for Wilt in the Celtics camp. But they fell all over themselves in being ecstatic for Jerry West.

Sam

I'll confess: the interest in Wilt is mostly because of what's going on in Miami.

I don't think Bron is another Wilt in terms of being consumed by records to the detriment of his team. Perhaps Bron is consumed by publicity, but it sure looks as though Bron hasn't found that key to winning that Sharman gave Wilt, i.e., defense. I vividly remember the Larry Bird - Dominique Wilkins shootout, when neither player seemed able to miss a shot, and which was ultimately decided in the Celtics favor by a defensive play - Bird stole the ball out of Nique's hands.

Michael Jordan's defense in his first six or so years in the league was not the all-conquering force that it was to become. But what Tommy said about Russ being worth 50-60 points a game, despite scoring only 15 or so, that's something I hope Lebron never learns. My big fear is that Dwayne Wade will clue Bron in, because Wade knows how to win.

There's nothing in those 'word pictures' about motivation. There should have been but there wasn't time. ("Ask me for anything but time." - Napoleon).

Wilt was a prodigy, national headlines as a teenager, every college in the country recruiting him, sportswriters predicting he would destroy Bill Russell when he turned pro. He had it too easy.

Russ didn't even make the varsity until his junior year and then he had to share a uniform. Only one school recruited him and that was a happy accident. As Cousy once said, Russ had a chip on his shoulder. Then, there's the racial thing, growing up in the deep South during the Jim Crow era; the losing his mother thing; the deliberate ill treatment by the West Coast press, even Avery Brundage, American Nazi, trying to get him kicked off the Olympic team. And those are just for starters. But it wasn't just the chip on his shoulder. Because he couldn't shoot, he had to find other ways to help his team win and that led to the transformation of the game of basketball.

Lebron may win some championships, but only if he tries to lead the league in steals, fights through picks, takes charges and passes the ball to Wade when it matters most. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. We have the Big Shamrock.

Spike,

I believe too little credit is given to the rest of the 1956-57 Celtics team. They played .812 ball that season BEFORE Russ joined them and .642 ball AFTER Russ joined them. The players OTHER than Russ averaged 56 RPG that season and undoubtedly would have grabbed a whole lot more if they hadn't played 78% of the season as Russ' teammates

Heinsohn and Loscy each averaged 10 RPG that season playing alongside Russ. The Celtics had another hall-of-famer (Arnie Risen) splitting the center job with Jack Nichols (a very good and rugged player) the previous year, when the two (combined) averaged 22 PPG and 20 RPG.

It's conceivable that the Celtics could have won that first championship without Russ, with Tommy being the league MVP and the championship VP, although Russ; defense was obviously a huge difference-maker, especially on the greatest single defensive play of all-time against Jack Coleman in the final game.

But, as it was, although Russ did play 78% of that season, Heinsohn won the Rookie of the Year award, and Tommy's scoring and rebounding saved their bacon in the 7th game of the finals.

None of this is really my point. I'm just sayin'.

My point is that Russell had an advantage that neither Wilt nor Lebron enjoyed. He won from the start, and winning for him became assumed early in his career. As others retired and he became the leader of the band, his absolute expectation of victory spread like wildfire to young guys who were joining the team and even to old-timers who were recruited near the ends of their careers.

I realize that younger fans will probably chalk up what I'm saying to the imagination of a biased fan, but those younger fans never had the experience of seeing the eyes of the Russell Celtics before a big game. Russell's predictable puking was only part of the incredible determination they mounted. Which is why Havlicek say that, whenever they lost, they felt it was a mistake.

Wilt and Lebron could make any disclaimers they wanted, but neither had/has any semblance of that absolute insistence on winning pretty much from Day One.

Sam

Sam wrote:BSH,

That advice came naturally to Sharman. As a player, he was certainly best known for his shooting, but he was also a hard-nosed (I mean "punch you in the mouth" hard-nosed) defensive stud. He basically passed on his own philosophy to Wilt, and it obviously worked.

When the Lakers won that Championship, I don't recall any significant display of happiness for Wilt in the Celtics camp. But they fell all over themselves in being ecstatic for Jerry West.

Sam

Sam-

that makes sense to me. My impression is that Wilt's individualistic, stat-oriented game was antithetical to who the Cs were, whereas West was the ultimate gamer, and a great team player. He would have fit in very well with Russ' Cs. Kindred spirits.

bobheckler wrote:

babyskyhook wrote:

Sam wrote:BSH,

That advice came naturally to Sharman. As a player, he was certainly best known for his shooting, but he was also a hard-nosed (I mean "punch you in the mouth" hard-nosed) defensive stud. He basically passed on his own philosophy to Wilt, and it obviously worked.

When the Lakers won that Championship, I don't recall any significant display of happiness for Wilt in the Celtics camp. But they fell all over themselves in being ecstatic for Jerry West.

Sam

Sam-

that makes sense to me. My impression is that Wilt's individualistic, stat-oriented game was antithetical to who the Cs were, whereas West was the ultimate gamer, and a great team player. He would have fit in very well with Russ' Cs. Kindred spirits.

bsh,

And we would have been thrilled to have had him.

bob

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