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The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and Bill Russell share a laugh together after Bryant was named MVP of the game during Game 7 of the NBA Finals at Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 17, 2010. (Mark Zaleski/The Press-Enterprise, file)
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Former NBA rivals Bill Russell, right, of the Boston Celtics, and Wilt Chamberlain, of the Philadelphia 76ers, laugh as they recall their glory days during a tribute to Russell at the FleetCenter in Boston, Wednesday night, May 26, 1999. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, file)
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Bill Russell, left, star of the Boston Celtics is congratulated by coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach after scoring his 10,000th point in the NBA game against the Baltimore Bullets in Boston Garden on Dec. 12, 1964. Auerbach coached the Boston Celtics to nine championships in the 1950s and 1960s. (AP Photo/file)
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Boston Celtics Hall of Fame center Bill Russell, left, walks off the court with Kevin Garnett after the Celtics won the 2008 NBA basketball championship with a 131-92 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, in Boston. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)
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Former NBA great Bill Russell speaks during a news conference at the NBA All-Star basketball weekend, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
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Boston Celtics legendary center Bill Russell has a light moment while answering questions from members of the media after a Celtics team practice in Waltham, Mass., Monday, Oct. 11, 1999. The Hall-of-Famer is working with the team on Monday and Tuesday, and will return to the team periodically to monitor, teach, and develop the players. (AP Photo/Angela Rowlings)
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Bill Russell laughs it up with Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw before Game 1 of the NBA Finals Thursday at TD Garden in Boston, Mass., June 5, 2008. Celtics defeat the Lakers 98-88. (The Press-Enterprise/Terry Pierson)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Hall of femurs Kareem Abdul Jabbar, left, along with Jerry Wets and Bill Russell, right, look on in the first quarter during the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Hall of Famers Dr. J Julius Erving, left, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Jerry West and Bill Russell in the second half during the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. Team LeBron won 148-145. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Hall of Famers Bill Russell, left, along with Kareem Abdul Jabbar in the second half during the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. Team LeBron won 148-145. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Hall of gamer Bill Russell prior to the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Hall of famers Jerry West, left, with Bill Russell prior to the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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NBA great Bill Russell reacts at a news conference as he learns the most valuable player award for the NBA basketball championships has been renamed the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award, Feb. 14, 2009, in Phoenix. Russell has died at age 88. His family said on social media that Russell died on Sunday, July 31, 2022. Russell anchored a Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 titles in 13 years. (AP Photo/Matt York, file)
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Hall of fame and former Boston Celtic great Bill Russell passed away at the age of 88. Celtic great Bill Russell during the unveiling of a bronze statue of legendary Los Angeles Lakers and NBA Hall of Fame player Elgin Baylor in Star Plaza created by sculptors/artists Julie Rotblatt Amrany and Omri Amrany at Staples Center on Friday, April 6, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Bill Russell grins at announcement that he had been named coach of the Boston Celtics basketball team, April 18, 1966. (AP Photo, File)
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Bill Russell on the red carpet at the 2019 NBA Awards at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica on Monday, June 24, 2019. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Bill Russell arrives at the NBA Awards on Monday, June 25, 2018, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Hall of Famers Bill Russell, left, along with Kareem Abdul Jabbar in the second half during the 67th NBA All-Star basketball game at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb.18, 2018 in Los Angeles. Team LeBron won 148-145. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
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Tom Hawkins of the Los Angeles Lakers lays a shot up over outstretched arm of Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics in the fourth period of their National Basketball Association game at Boston Garden April 22, 1968. Boston won 107 to 101 to lead series 1-0. (AP Photo)
Lakers and Celtics fans might not agree on much, but they’re in accord about something important: “Bill Russell was a treasure.”
Lakers governor Jeanie Buss tweeted that shortly after we all learned that Russell died peacefully Sunday at 88, news that stirred an outpouring of appreciation from around the sports world and beyond, where Russell has so long been revered as a champion, a teammate, a civil rights leader. A human.
That’s true in L.A. as much as anywhere, despite Russell’s professional basketball playing affiliation and the way he downright dominated the Lakers for so many years.
He was, of course, the cornerstone of the Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 championships in Russell’s 13 seasons. They beat the Lakers for seven of those titles.
“He terrorized everybody for 13 years,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said once, with great admiration, during an appearance on “Dan Patrick Show,” as he sought to explain why he believed neither he, nor Michael Jordan nor LeBron James outranked the Celtics’ Hall of Famer on the scale of success.
Abdul-Jabbar just missed competing against Russell, but Jerry West had many resplendent run-ins that spurred the NBA’s greatest rivalry, as his Lakers lost their first six NBA Finals to the Russell-led Celtics from 1962 to 1969.
For having been such fierce competitors, Russell and West, perfectionists and game-changers both, also shared a fierce respect.
That was reflected in a note Russell recently sent to West, which he spoke of earlier this year in The Athletic. It read, in part: “The greatest honor a man can have is the respect and friendship of his peers. You have that more than any man I know.”
Magic Johnson described Russell as his idol and Kobe Bryant found in him a mentor whose tactical insights served him well. Among them: The way he set up his teams for success by focusing his contributions in the areas where the Celtics’ needed them most – in his case, rebounding, defending.
Russell was a five-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, a shot-blocker extraordinaire who changed how NBA teams played defense. He finished with 21,620 career rebounds — that’s 22.5 per game — and led the league in rebounding four times.
But his social contributions towered over those basketball metrics.
Russell was an outspoken, unwavering activist. He was at the March on Washington for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and he stood with Muhammad Ali when the the boxing great was stripped of his Olympic medal after he refused to go to war in Vietnam.
Later, he knelt with in support of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he and other athletes began taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and social injustice. Russell tweeted a photo of himself, adorned with his Presidential Medal of Freedom, crouching in solidarity.
When he’d played in Boston, Russell’s advocacy was met with abuse and torment, including break-ins and vandalism.
His daughter, Karen, documented some of those awful instances in a piece for the New York Times in 1987, when she wrote that she “always admired the way my father dealt with these intrusions. He never compromised his values. It would have been easier to acquiesce to the fans – or to a sponsor who offered him a lower fee than they would a white person for endorsing a product. But he would not.”
In an interview with Jemele Hill, Bryant shared a conversation he’d had with Russell about those experiences.
Kobe on the late, great Bill Russell
— Lakers Global
(@LakersGlobal) July 31, 2022
“I said, ‘How’d you deal with it?’” Bryant recalled. “He said, ‘Well, I internalized it. I felt like the best thing that I could do is use that as fuel. As opposed to just simply having an emotional outburst. I decided to use that as energy to enhance my performance.’ ”
Some months after Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash in early 2020, Russell posted a tweet that included a photo of himself wearing a Bryant jersey and KB hat and this sentiment: “Thinking of my friend #Kobe.”
And in Sunday’s announcement of Russell’s death, also posted on Twitter, he was pictured wearing a KB ballcap, a lasting symbol of his connection to L.A., where basketball fans are thinking of him and remembering him not a nemesis, but as a formidable, beloved figure.
An announcement… pic.twitter.com/KMJ7pG4R5Z
— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) July 31, 2022
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