1/12/2023 0 Comments Bill russellRussell never feared going too far as a player activist himself. But you’ve made one stand and you did great in that, but don’t go too far.’ He was, like, giving me a guardrail.” “He was kind of guiding me, saying: ‘Don’t go out too far right now because you are a player and you need to play the game. “He always used to tell me about not getting too carried away because we were in the ’70s,” Haywood recalled. Sometimes, Haywood’s late-night talks with Russell came with surprising advice about activism. Haywood said his teammates would jokingly refer to Russell as Haywood’s “daddy” because of how close they were. Without Russell’s risking his own livelihood and enduring the cruelties he did as a Black player in the segregated Boston of the 1950s and 1960s, athlete activism would look much different today, if it existed at all. players’ union encourages its members to be passionate about their politics, especially around social justice. Now, it is common for athletes across many sports to be outspoken, no doubt inspired by Russell. From the time he was a young man to his death at age 88 on Sunday, Russell was a civil rights activist who consistently used his platform as a celebrity athlete to confront racism, no matter whom it alienated or what it did to his public popularity. After all, there were so many of each that he is considered one of the greatest basketball players in history, and in some corners, the greatest, period.īut after his nearly nine decades of life, his most consequential legacy has less to do with the sport he dominated than his work off the court. It’s easy to remember the shots that Bill Russell blocked or the N.B.A.
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