re: Bill Russell has passed away at the age of 88

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It’s stupid how he isn’t in a lot of people’s top 5 NBA greats. He’s a lock all time IMO

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Bill Russell was a basketball unicorn. His combination of size and strength and speed and smarts, and his ability to use all of them together, forever changed the sport.

Centers were not supposed to do the things he could do. No one was supposed to do the things he could do. He could run and jump and rebound and turn shots he blocked into fast breaks the other way. He was, as Celtics coach Red Auerbach said when Russell went into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1975, “the single most devastating force in the history of the game.”

Russell was a champion. He won 11 NBA titles. He won back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco. He won gold in the 1956 Olympics. Longtime Boston sportswriter Bob Ryan reminded the world this weekend that Russell went a combined 21-0 in elimination games played between college, the Olympics and the NBA.

Russell was a pioneer. The last two of his NBA championships were won as a player-coach, making him the first Black head coach in the NBA. He fought injustice and bigotry at every turn, never flinching.

There is no questioning the massive legacy Russell left behind when he died Sunday at the age of 88.

There always will be questions about how the St. Louis sports scene could look different today had that legacy landed here in 1956.

I’m not the first to wonder and won't be the last.

Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan most recently pondered the idea back in 2014, making a case that the Atlanta Hawks still could be the St. Louis Hawks if things had gone down differently years ago.

Late, great Post-Dispatch sports columnist Bryan Burwell made the topic an entire chapter in his book, “The Best St. Louis Sports Arguments,” naming it the worst decision in St. Louis sports history.

Since then, the fine print on the old lease handed to the Rams at The Dome at America's Center could perhaps object to that description, but let's not get off track here.

The point: St. Louis had its shot at Bill Russell, and St. Louis passed.

The year was 1956. The St. Louis Hawks were coming off a bad first season here — bad enough to secure the second pick in the draft. Auerbach desperately wanted Russell for his Celtics, but he knew Russell would go before Boston could draft him. The Rochester Royals had the No. 1 pick. The St. Louis Hawks had the second. There was no way Russell should have slipped past 1, let alone 2.

Auerbach went to work.

The Celtics' coach convinced Celtics owner Walter Brown, who had a hand in the Ice Capades traveling entertainment show, to send some big events to Rochester if the Royals did not pick Russell. The Royals took Si Green out of Duquesne instead.

Auerbach then focused on the St. Louis Hawks, who were very willing partners in a deal that sent Russell to Boston for former St. Louis University star Ed Macauely and Cliff Hagan.

Then time went to work.

The Celtics won their first NBA championship in double-overtime of Game 7 against the Hawks in that 1956-57 season. The Hawks countered by beating the Celtics in the NBA Finals rematch the following season.

It looked like the trade worked for both teams.

History forced a sharp turn.

Starting in 1959, the Celtics won eight consecutive championships in a span that would, by its end, include 11 titles in 13 seasons with Russell as either a player (nine) or a player-coach (two). The 12-time All-Star and five-time MVP averaged 15.1 points and 22.5 rebounds over a career that included more than 1,000 games played between the regular season and playoffs.

The Hawks reached the Finals two more times but lost to the Celtics both trips, in 1960 and 1961. The team moved to Atlanta before the 1968-69 season. The NBA champs that season? Russell and the Celtics.

Now, there are some important notes here to consider.

Celtics ownership was reportedly reluctant to make the exchange initially. Macauley, who had a son who was living with spinal meningitis, requested to be moved to his hometown to make things better for his family. That was said to have influenced Celtics owner Brown.

Russell, years after his retirement, said on the record that he would not have played in St. Louis. The cold reception that initially awaited him from Boston sports fans was not shared by Celtics ownership and coaches. Boston became the first NBA team, for example, to start five Black players.

“St. Louis was overwhelmingly racist,” Russell once said during an interview with NBA TV. “If I would have gotten drafted by St. Louis, I would not been in the NBA. I would not have gone to the NBA.”

Would that have been the case in reality? Who knows. Russell did not often say things he did not mean.

Macauley and Hagan became Hall of Famers. They combined to share 13 All-Star honors, six of which happened in STL. They helped Bob Pettit and the Hawks win their lone championship in St. Louis. It's just that neither one was Bill Russell. Because no one was Bill Russell. Except for Bill Russell. His greatness is being celebrated this week as it should be, stirring one whopper of a "what-if" around here.

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