Sounds interesting. I'll have to look for a copy. Bill Russell played basketball before my time, so I've only seen a few classic games, and heard him as a television analyst, but Mr. Russell always seemed like a truly talented player, and a smart man to boot.
Bill Simmons blathers“Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man,” written by Bill Russell and Taylor Branch (the same guy who just finished the epic trilogy about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). It would have been a thoughful, well-written biography even without the chapter called “Champions,” the single-best thing ever written by a great player about the process of winning. It's just an amazing piece, with Russell dismantling his 13-year run with the Celtics and explaining why they won and kept winning -- not the game details, but how the personalities meshed, how they kept themselves motivated, how different players assumed different roles, how everything was about the team. Just the section on Sam Jones alone (how Sam would only occasionally take over games because he didn't want the responsibility of being the best player every night) is worth the read. And I loved how he messed with Wilt Chamberlain's head, among others. Nobody meshed the process of playing and thinking like Bill Russell did; there's a reason he has 11 rings right now.
Re-reading this book over the weekend, I was also struck by Russell's anger in the “Starting Points” chapter about black-white relations, certain racial stereotypes with athletes, even how he was treated by whites in Boston when he played there, culminating in the famous part where he jokes that if Paul Revere lived in Boston in the 60's, he would have ridden around screaming, “The niggers are coming! The niggers are coming!” Even 27 years later, you can still feel him bristling.
“Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man (Fireside sports classic)” (Bill Russell)
Tags: Basketball, /Books, /NBA
