064 Higher Power transcript (Bill Russell)

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[00:00:00] Amit: It's time for Famous and Gravy, life lessons from dead celebrities. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

[00:00:08] Michael: This person died 2022, age 88. He took part in the 1963 March on Washington and was seated in the front row of the crowd to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King deliver his I Have a Dream speech.

[00:00:24] Friend: Trying to picture that front row. Uh, is it Harry Belafonte?

[00:00:28] Michael: Not Harry Belafonte, but it's a really good guess. He went to Mississippi after the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered and worked with his brother to open a camp in Jackson.

[00:00:38] Friend: Um, not Kirk Douglas? Was Kirk Douglas in Buffalo?

[00:00:41] Michael: Not Kirk Douglas, but a good guess. Alright. He was once described by his coach as quote, the single most devastating force in the history of the game.

[00:00:50] Friend: I would think that it's someone who maybe was an amazing running back. Maybe Jim Brown?

[00:00:55] Michael: Not Jim Brown, but a very good guess. In 2011, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

[00:01:05] Friend: Now I'm embarrassed that I don't know this, because this obviously is a pinnacle of American, um, amazingness. I can't get it.

[00:01:12] Michael: He was remembered for his ability to enhance the talents of his teammates, even as he dominated the action, and to do so without bravado.

[00:01:20] Friend: Oh, well, no, Roger Staubach wouldn't be the guy. He wouldn't have done that.

[00:01:24] Michael: The trophy for the most valuable player of the NBA championship is named after him.

[00:01:29] Friend: Oh gosh. Bill Russell.

[00:01:31] Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Bill Russell.

[00:01:34] Friend: Should have got that way earlier. . I feel so terrible now.

[00:01:38] Archival: my motivation for most games was. I believed that I had within me a perfect game and I had all these criterions which made up to make a perfect game.

[00:01:53] And so I really wanted to play a perfect game by my standards. And I knew that if I went out there goofing off, that might be the night I was going to have it. So you can't take a chance on that. So you got to go out there and give it all you got from the minute they toss the ball up. Cause this may be the night and you, you don't want to miss that night.

[00:02:25] Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

[00:02:28] Amit: And I'm Amit Kapoor. Michael and I are looking for ways to make life better.

[00:02:32] Michael: And we believe that the best years might lie ahead. So on this show, we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years, and we go through a series of categories reviewing their lives to extract wisdom and inspiration.

[00:02:44] At the end, we answer the question, would I want that life? Today, Bill Russell died 2022 age 88. Shall we hop right in?

[00:02:56] Amit: Let's get on the court, Michael.

[00:02:57] Michael: Let's get on the court. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary. Okay, so, uh, this one is actually a little bit of a caveat, because we're not going to be grading the first line of the New York Times obituary.

[00:03:11] Occasionally, the New York Times decides to deviate from format and not have the very first sentence be the most important sentence. You know, I don't know why they do this sometimes. I think this is one of those where they had the obit prepared for a while and they wanted to lead with an anecdote. But it's not just the Times, by the way.

[00:03:28] The Washington Post, the L. A. Times, like a lot of prominent newspapers decided not to lead with a first line of an obituary. However, there is a kind of first line of an obituary three paragraphs in. So, what I've decided to do today is share that sort of first line, because it kind of reads like a first line, Then I also went and grabbed two other first lines of obituaries, one from the Wall Street Journal and another from Politico.

[00:03:55] And I think I'm just gonna, like, share most of these. So

[00:03:58] how are we doing this then? We're doing three ratings?

[00:04:00] My thought is that we should grade the New York Times sort of first line, but there's automatic demerits. I'm with you. And then I do want to see what other obits said that we should be drawing attention to.

[00:04:15] Ah, okay. Head to

[00:04:16] head competition.

[00:04:17] Yes, a little bit. Very appropriate. All right. Bill Russell, who propelled the Celtics to 11 NBA championships, the final two when he became the first black head coach in the major American sports league, died on Sunday. He was 88. Had that been the first line of the obituary, what does it miss for you?

[00:04:37] Amit: Uh, his role as a humanitarian.

[00:04:39] Michael: Unbelievably, yes, 100 percent, oh my god, why is that not in here? We were down in Lexington, Kentucky, and we were supposed to play our next Michigan game. Casey was my roommate, and he went to go down and get a, um, pregame meal at the hotel, and they wouldn't serve it. So I said, well, Casey, that's the best thing you've said to me in a long time.

[00:05:02] And he says, what do you mean? I said, I'm gonna go home. I went in the room, and I called Eastern Airlines, and I says, what is your next flight out of here? So Casey says, you're not gonna leave me. I said, okay, two seats. The Wall Street Journal did get that. The Wall Street Journal said Bill Russell, the towering basketball star, and Titan of Civil Rights, who was the centerpiece of the Boston Celtics dynasty as they won 11 championships in the 1950s and 1960s, died on Sunday.

[00:05:31] That's way closer to what I was expecting. Yeah, what was, what did they use? Titan of Civil Rights? Titan of Civil Rights. And let me also share this Politico one, just so you have it. Bill Russell, the NBA great who anchored a Boston Celtics dynasty that won 11 championships in 13 years, the last two as the first black head coach in any major U.

[00:05:51] S. sport, and marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., died Sunday. He was 88. That's great. That captures it all. That, I, my, the political one was my favorite one. Yes. For sure. And, like, actually referencing Martin Luther King, I think, was very important. Okay, well,

[00:06:08] Amit: let's stick to the script. So, so, let's evaluate

[00:06:10] Michael: New York Times.

[00:06:11] The fact that the New York Times didn't lead with his civil rights contributions is not just annoying, it's sort of, like, negligent. I was very disappointed. Not only was I disappointed that New York Times broke from format, but like, okay, we need to make it a lot about basketball, but his contributions to civil rights are so tremendous, whether he wanted to draw attention to that or not, that to not like also capture them in what approximates as the first line is oversight.

[00:06:42] Yeah, because

[00:06:43] Amit: what we're talking about here is we're talking about a thesis line. That's what we are equating the first line to here for the New York Times. And if this is their first line equivalent. Yeah, it's completely negligent. It's just also so statistics based. You know, I think the other thing that's going to come up a lot here, outside of his off court record, is how he actually played the game and turned it

[00:07:06] Michael: around.

[00:07:06] I agree with that, that he really revolutionized basketball. That he was like an innovator and a pioneer for the game in so many ways. That the The world of basketball, before Bill Russell and after Bill Russell, are really two fundamentally different sports. Like, if you're watching in the 1950s, you kind of recognize it, but it is as soon as Bill Russell and, to some extent, Will Chamberlain arrive, that the game looks and feels very different.

[00:07:33] And that the whole culture of this sport is completely changed.

[00:07:36] Amit: Naismith and peach baskets up until the arrival of Bill Russell, it seems. Totally! Totally.

[00:07:42] Michael: So, you know, like... It's funny, for all his importance and impact, I think he's not as quote unquote famous as even some of his contemporaries. You know what I mean?

[00:07:54] Amit: Absolutely. I mean, the name recognition of Will Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul Jabbar far supersedes that of Bill Russell, I think. I agree

[00:08:01] Michael: with that. Okay, so the Wall Street Journal did have Titan of Civil Rights, and we both kind of liked that. Yep. You know, I think we did need to say what he did and what he's known for.

[00:08:13] I don't know, are there other words? If we were to write our own obit omit, like, what other words would you consider throwing in here? I like,

[00:08:20] Amit: I read the word reimagined a few times, um, and that is, I think, applicable to both. The way that he reimagined the game of basketball, and he reimagined the America that we live in.

[00:08:33] You know, and he was kind of doing both at the same time.

[00:08:35] Michael: Yeah, I like that. I think the word reimagined would have been great. I feel like I did need the word dynasty in here. Because there is no greater example of the Boston Celtics dynasty than, I mean, they won 11 championships in 13 years. That is a accomplishment that has not been repeated in any other major sport and probably never will be.

[00:08:56] Like that, and then eight in a row.

[00:08:58] Amit: Yeah, that is insane. Let's sit with that for a second. Eight championships in a row.

[00:09:04] Michael: I mean the best the Yankees ever did was five in a row, right? Yes. Like that is total domination. So before we grade this thing, I do want to give a little bit of credit to the New York Times for saying the final two when he became the first black head coach in a major American sports league.

[00:09:21] That is also an accomplishment worth noting. That is huge. Yes. Yeah, in baseball, and in football, and in basketball, there had never been a head coach who was black before Bill Russell. Correct. You know, I feel like that is, I don't know, I mean, do you, do you mention that in the same breath as the 11 NBA championships or not?

[00:09:39] Amit: There, well, it's the problem, it's the too much problem. Again, that alone is first line worthy, but when you have so many other things stacked in such a tall tower next to it, what do you choose? What's the highest building?

[00:09:52] Michael: Let's just give a grade here, right? Yeah, go ahead. I'm gonna give it a four. Okay.

[00:09:57] I'm just very disappointed in all the decisions that were made here. I'm already docking three for breaking from format. I think the New York Times really needed to point to his civil rights accomplishments earlier, and I think that reimagined pioneering innovative, whatever word you want to use to point to his ways in which he changed the game, didn't just win at the game, but actually fundamentally altered how we think about it and how we approach it.

[00:10:22] That needs to be captured here. And, and four is generous, if you ask me, I'm very disappointed. So I give it a four out of 10. Yeah. Well, I'll

[00:10:30] Amit: match your anger and give it a three. The omission of the off court life of Bill Russell is horrendous.

[00:10:37] Michael: Flat out unacceptable. How dare you, sir? Okay, let's move on.

[00:10:41] Category two, five things I love about you. Here, Amit and I come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we want to be talking about them in the first place. Why don't you lead, Amit?

[00:10:51] Amit: All right, well, I guess I'm gonna do what, uh, none of these obituaries really did. I wrote down a few words, but the one I like is higher power, and that is because he literally elevated the game of basketball.

[00:11:04] Literally took it from the ground to the air. So up until Bill Russell got into the NBA, and really how he played college at the University of San Francisco, it was very traditional for defensemen to always stay planted on their feet. Defense was nothing more than to really keep the ball from being passed around.

[00:11:23] It wasn't really about blocking shots, getting in people's faces, jumping to intimidate. And that is what Bill Russell did, is made it an inside, elevated game. More

[00:11:35] Michael: vertical is, I think, the way they describe it. Yeah,

[00:11:37] Amit: more vertical, right? So if you think about it, and this is why I say higher power, is the game went from...

[00:11:42] to the ground to approximately 12 inches in the air above that. You know, much like a, a psychedelic trip or praying to the divine, he literally elevated this. Elevated the game. Let's not even say the game. He literally just elevated a life experience, you know? Elevated

[00:11:59] Michael: this experience. I like it. I had, I had a version of that and I don't know whether to, is there more you want to say about that?

[00:12:06] Amit: No, I think that alone is worthy of a one thing.

[00:12:09] Michael: Let's go with my thing number two. I actually wrote, and this is a little bit in the re imagining, I wrote ability to visualize. So, part of that is that he did change the game in many respects. Made it more vertical as we were just talking about. He also thought about the transition game.

[00:12:24] That, the speed with which you move from offense to defense. You grab a rebound, you know, you are thinking about the next play in the fast break. He really pioneered, like, how to make that faster and make it an edge. I would get a rebound. And Coos would say, instead of looking for me, I'll be over here so that you don't have to look for me.

[00:12:44] You know, like if we're on the road and I see a green uniform, I know that's him. And so I can pass the ball off before I land it. And so a guy's taking a jump shot, by the time he lands, we're in our offense. He also looked at defense as not just a reactionary experience, but as you're not just responding to what the offense is doing, but you're actually trying to make the offense do certain things.

[00:13:11] So you're not just like playing off of what they're coming at you, you are limiting their options and forcing them into certain situations. And this is actually what gets to the ability to visualize for me. So. Okay, I'm never going to be a 6'11, uh, basketball player. But, when he's talking about his experience as a college player, he is talking about, like, imagining things, these things with his roommate, his friend.

[00:13:38] I'm forgetting his name. Casey

[00:13:39] Amit: Jones. Yes. Not, not from the Grateful Dead song. Different one. Different Casey Jones. Different Casey Jones, yes.

[00:13:45] Michael: This man does not have to watch his speed. So him and his friend Casey Jones, his roommate at University of San Francisco, they would, like, dream this up and, like, picture what was happening in their mind on the court when they weren't even playing.

[00:13:59] It was a total visualization exercise. I guess my senior year in high school, about anywhere through the season, I started to see things and notice things. I was sitting with my eyes closed watching plays in my head.

[00:14:17] I was in my own private basketball laboratory making blueprints for myself. So, I'm going to do a little side note here, because I was researching this episode. I was very impressed with the way Bill Russell talked about his ability to visualize the game. My son has been struggling to, uh, feel comfortable on a bicycle.

[00:14:36] And, he and I were alone on Sunday morning, and I said, Let's sit down on the floor for a second, criss cross, applesauce, and close our eyes, and picture yourself on the bicycle. Feel yourself going a little to the left, what are you going to do? Feel yourself going to a little to the right, what are you going to do?

[00:14:53] Oh, oh, there's a bump there. And we just closed our eyes and did this little, sort of, gamed it out. Pictured it in our mind. And then when we went out for his bicycle lesson, He was awesome. He felt so much more comfortable and he sat there and I think a lot of it is about how we deal with our fears. I'd forgotten how important visualization can be.

[00:15:14] I think I do this in some ways without thinking about it. There are some activities in my life that I kind of plan for and game out in my head. But to actually close your eyes and imagine where you're going to be and how you're going to respond to a situation is an incredibly powerful life tool. And Bill Russell did that and it's a big part of the reason.

[00:15:32] that he achieved such excellence on the basketball court. So I'm just going to leave it at that. Thing number two, ability to visualize. Okay,

[00:15:41] Amit: great. That gives number three to me. It does. Sucked in high school. Um, those were not my words, actually, ESPN's Martenzi Johnson. use that when he did an episode on ESPN's Daily about Bill Russell.

[00:15:54] And uh, it's pretty true. He was pretty uncoordinated as a high school kid. He happened to gain one foot in height between his freshman and senior year, going from 5'10 to 6'10, which was essentially what made him a... target to be recruited by the University of San Francisco, but no other schools were recruiting him.

[00:16:15] So yes, probably better than most other people we knew in high school. But if you look at say the top 100 NBA players of all time, he was probably the lowest ranking as a high school. But I think what I love about that, I love anybody that sucks in high school and then makes it big. It's an old story, but it's the greatest one is that like, sometimes you don't have to be that good in high school at whatever it is.

[00:16:40] Michael: Excellent. I'll go thing number four. He loves libraries. Really absolutely loved libraries like this man is a big time reader. So his mom died at a very young age He grew up in monroe, louisiana And his mom died and the way I heard this story that you know custom at the time in his family and his culture was like that he would go live with his aunts, but his father refused to But then him live with his aunts and he and his brother went off to Oakland where he was raised essentially by a single dad.

[00:17:10] And he tells the story of being in Oakland and that being the first time that he was able to have a library card because he was raised in the Jim Crow South and that he would spend long hours in the library. And throughout his life, he remained a total book lover. And one of the things his mother said to his father before he died was, Make sure those boys go to college.

[00:17:34] This is the one thing I want you to promise me. Bill Russell also loved Star Trek, loved NPR, loved Willie Nelson, and Jeopardy, and logged road trips in silence. There is something very contemplative. about Bill Russell. And I think he's a complicated figure. I think he's way more intelligent than you realize.

[00:17:52] I think he has a really, like, deep intellect. And I think it comes from having hung out in libraries for hours and hours as a kid. And I love that about him. That's awesome. Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Yes, I do. Okay.

[00:18:05] Amit: You want to take number five? I'm going to take this in a completely different direction.

[00:18:08] He flicks off his friends. Okay. Did you, did you come across

[00:18:12] Michael: this? I did see

[00:18:14] Amit: references to this. He's been caught on camera quite a few times, but he was sort of notorious for acknowledging his friends by flicking them off. The most famous, I think, was Charles Barkley in, it was like a 2018 NBA award ceremony, and they panned over to Bill Russell, and Charles Barkley's like trying to talk to him, and all he does is just flip off.

[00:18:34] Charles Barkley, not realizing the cameras were on Bill. But this was his greeting. He did it to Kareem Abdul Jabbar, he did it to Dominique Wilkins, he did it to Vince Carter, all of these were famous incidents caught on tape. And I just like the sincerity of it, uh, because I have those friends. I have those friends that that's how I greet them.

[00:18:52] Like if you see them at a gathering, you know, it's not like if you're one on one, you're not going to greet them that way. But if you see them at a gathering and across the room, you're like, oh, what am I going to do? I'm not going to wave to this guy because they, like, we're too close. But instead, you're just going to do the most horrific, offensive thing and, uh, is your act of sincerity is you just flip them the bird.

[00:19:12] I like that, uh, Bill Russell, legend.

[00:19:17] Michael: I'm speechless, except I agree. And I'm more than happy to sign off on it. Although I'm a little disappointed neither of us put the laugh on our five things. And he describes it as the laugh as a sneeze. Like, it just has to come out, like a sneeze, you know? I guess that doesn't belong, or just didn't make honorable mention.

[00:19:38] I guess if the New York Times drops the ball, maybe we

[00:19:40] Amit: can write it from format. I mean, you can still acknowledge it.

[00:19:43] Michael: Alright, famous cackle. Let's, uh, recap. So, thing number one, you said... Introduced to higher power. Introduced to higher power. Thing number two, I said, uh, ability to visualize. Number three, you said...

[00:19:56] Sucked in high school. Number four, I said, uh, loved libraries and books. Shout out to our sponsor, Half Price Books. Number five, you said, uh... He flipped the bird to his best friends. And honorable mention to his, uh, cackle.

[00:20:14] Okay. Let's take a break.

[00:20:19] Amit: Uh, Michael. Yeah. On Sundays. I like to treat myself.

[00:20:23] Michael: Hmm. Uh, how do you like to treat yourself? Pedicure.

[00:20:26] Amit: Uh, some foamy latte. I feel like

[00:20:29] Michael: you're talking about the finer things in life here. Well, this is

[00:20:32] Amit: really how I, you know, soothe my soul. Is there anything that you do?

[00:20:37] Michael: Well, you've seen my bookshelf. You know, I like to collect great things.

[00:20:43] For example, did you know right now at Half Price Books there is a leather bound collector's edition of Muhammad Ali, His Life and Times, signed by Muhammad Ali? Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music, Selected Poems and Songs, Signed Copy. Something that's like, this person who created this thing, and touched this thing, and now it exists on my bookshelf.

[00:21:03] That's meaningful to me.

[00:21:04] Amit: It's kind of like a pedicure. So they curate things only from our episodes?

[00:21:09] Michael: I think this is just a selection of some of the many special items they have, and they're rare collections. price books. People bring very valuable items and have price books compensates and recognize that and makes them available

[00:21:21] Amit: for all of us.

[00:21:21] You know, I think I'm just gonna check out the all new HPV dot com where I can find my local store, plan my next trip, maybe even buy online to pick up in store. Possibly create a wishlist, and more.

[00:21:33] Michael: I think it's gonna go great with your pedicure.

[00:21:39] Okay, category three. Malkovich, Malkovich. This category is named after the movie, Being John Malkovich, in which people take a portal into John Malkovich's mind and they can have a front row seat to his experiences. So, I'll go first. I do want to get into the non basketball parts of his life, and even beyond the civil rights stuff, but this one is right in the center of both those things, because I think it has to be mentioned.

[00:22:02] On April 5th, 1968, this is one day after Martin Luther King has been assassinated. It's the 1968 Eastern Conference Finals between 76ers. By this time, these two teams are huge rivals, that they've been at each other's throats, and Boston has been. dominating them. Both teams were fairly well integrated at that point and America's in the middle of the tumultuous 1960s and then Martin Luther King is assassinated.

[00:22:32] So there was a question, do we play or not? Everybody had shown up to the auditorium in Philadelphia. You know, there was a real risk of riots on the streets. But, Bill Russell is on the Boston Celtics, and at that time Wilt Chamberlain was on the Philadelphia 76ers. And, apparently each team decided, let's let these two guys meet and talk it out.

[00:22:58] Should we play, or should we not play? They decided to play. The reason this is a Malkovich for me is that as Bill Russell achieves next level, legendary success as a basketball player, he does so at the same time that the civil rights movement has been heating up. He also seems to be really conflicted about Just how unimportant basketball is, or how important it can be.

[00:23:30] Years later, I see him asked about this, and he's like, I'm not sure if it was the right call or not. I just don't know. I just don't know. Like, this, he was asked about it in something like 2008, so we're talking, what, 45 years after this happened? I want to be behind the eyes at the moment, because I just don't know how to answer this question.

[00:23:50] What's at the heart of the question for me is how important are sports? They are representative of our deepest aspirations. They're also a distraction. And they're also in some ways meaningless. But they do have some real power in our lives. And I think Nowhere is that, I don't know, the conflict between those two things, between being meaningful versus meaningless and being symbolically important versus actually important, nowhere is that more present than in Bill Russell as a figure.

[00:24:23] I can't think of anybody who quite embodies the tension surrounding that question. So I want to be behind his eyes as he and Wilt make the decision to play. Yeah. What do you think? I don't

[00:24:35] Amit: know. I mean, for a guy like Bill Russell, who defined much of his life as off the basketball court, that um, basketball was so secondary or tertiary to what his meaning or his purpose on earth was, I don't know.

[00:24:49] I would have expected them to not play.

[00:24:52] Michael: This is kind of the thing that's the, again, the central tension for me around Bill Russell. I think when somebody is able to win in such a dominating way, there's a real desire for us to want to back out their personality characteristics and what led them to being such...

[00:25:12] You know, next level competitors. Obviously there's something about the body and God given talents. But beyond that, what is the psychology that leads you to win? That is in there somewhere in him. It has to be. If you win 11 championships in 13 years, at the same time, as he's a Celtic and certainly in the years beyond, he's also warring with himself saying, I am not just that I was with have a check one time.

[00:25:39] And, uh, this person came up, we were going someplace and some, so you're a basketball player. I said, no, and John says, why do you always say you're not a basketball player? I said, John, that's what I do. That's not what I am. There's something that comes to the fore for me with this question of do I play or not?

[00:26:01] Is this the most important thing for not? Is this of service to my ego or of service to America or culture? You know, do we go out there and play a basketball game? The day after Martin Luther King was killed or not. There's something about the presence of that question that brings all of that right to the fore for me, which is why this is my Malkovich.

[00:26:21] Yeah, but are

[00:26:22] Amit: you surprised at the outcome as I am? Yeah,

[00:26:25] Michael: but I but I think you could you can that that's the thing is you can make the case for playing or for not Playing you know, and and there's a good argument on both

[00:26:33] Amit: sides. There's a good argument of honor on both sides. I think

[00:26:37] Michael: as well Yes, that's correct.

[00:26:39] That's correct. So That's my Malkovich.

[00:26:42] Amit: Okay. What have you got? Mine also has to do with the Celtics versus the 76ers. So Will Chamberlain and Bill Russell were notoriously known as rivals. It was often Bill Russell versus Will Chamberlain, whether Will Chamberlain was at Philadelphia or playing for the Lakers.

[00:26:59] Michael: This is maybe one of the greatest, um, well actually it's funny, Russell would describe it as a competitiveness, not a rivalry. Uh, because there was so much

[00:27:06] Amit: respect. I'm actually glad you led with that because that's, that's the point I'm going to get to is that they were competitors, not rivals. So there was a tradition for a while in the sixties of a Thanksgiving Day game between the Celtics and the 76ers always played in Philadelphia.

[00:27:22] And very, very few people knew this because he didn't talk about it much the time, but he talked about it in the decades following and they had this tradition for that Thanksgiving Day game that Will Chamberlain would go pick up Bill Russell from his Philadelphia hotel, take him to his mom's house, to Will Chamberlain's mom's house, and they'd go hang around, they'd have a big Thanksgiving dinner, they wouldn't really Talk basketball at all.

[00:27:47] I think that was off limits. They did a lot of talk about toy trains. And then Bill Russell would take a nap in Wilt Chamberlain's bed in his childhood home. And then three hours later, they would go to the arena and beat the hell out of each other in a fierce competition. So the Malakovich of this is That dinner in which you're not talking about basketball at all, but you have this huge, huge, looming presence of your chief rival chief competitor, and it's a malkovich for me because how do you compartmentalize that?

[00:28:25] So, well, I don't think I've ever been in that position, which is probably why it's something I'm soaked. Curious about to have this close friendship to spend a very important holiday with and avoid the subject entirely that hours later We're gonna go beat the hell out of each other. And in fact, I'm gonna sleep in your bed first

[00:28:48] Michael: There is something really desirable about the ability to do that though, right?

[00:28:52] Is that something you wish you could do better? I mean, can you imagine analogous situations? Oh,

[00:28:57] Amit: absolutely I mean, I, I envy the hell out of it. Yeah, totally. Totally. Just to, to be, you know, it's, it's the old adage of just the present moment. You know, just the present moment of trains and turkey and, uh, mom and, and somehow zoning out like what else is imminent right in front of you.

[00:29:16] A future that's even known, it's, it's hugely desirable.

[00:29:20] Michael: You know what else I love about that, just for what it's worth, I've had a few Thanksgiving dinners where. There was just a random group of people around the table, and they're kind of the best ones. You know, it's the one holiday that's a little bit of a wild card.

[00:29:33] I mean, you're supposed to be with family, but you might be with just a room full of strangers, but somebody says, you shouldn't be alone today, come to our table. And so, I like that there was a tradition around this. Well, that's

[00:29:45] Amit: awesome. Yeah, totally. I have that too. When I lived overseas, you know, that was a very important thing.

[00:29:48] It's just like, I was eating Thanksgiving with these sometimes random group of people that later became good friends.

[00:29:54] Michael: Totally. Yeah, this is a good holiday. And I guess it's on the horizon by the time this episode comes out. Well, happy Thanksgiving everyone. Yes. Uh, okay. Let's move on. Category four. Love and marriage.

[00:30:04] How many marriages? Also how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? Okay, so we have four marriages here. Uh, first one, Rose Swisher. That was Bill's college sweetheart from 1956 to 1973. They were married. Bill was 22. They divorced, uh, when he was 39. So, essentially, it spanned his entire, uh, NBA career.

[00:30:27] Uh, they had three children together. Uh, Karen Russell went on to, uh, Harvard Law. She's a really impressive woman, as you see her interviewed. Uh, and then two sons. Marriage number two was to Dorothy. Uh, she was Miss USA. They got married in 1977, divorced in 1980. Bill was 43 when they got married, 46 when they got divorced.

[00:30:49] Then in 1996, he married his third wife, Marilyn. This is the jewelry dealer, and apparently it sounded like he might have met Marilyn when he was getting the ring from Miss USA. And they just remained friends, and then somewhere in the mid 60s, discovered they actually cared about one another. Not mid 60s,

[00:31:05] Amit: that doesn't make sense.

[00:31:06] Mid 80s. I'm

[00:31:06] Michael: sorry, mid 90s. Mid 90s, they discovered, uh, early mid 90s. Somewhere around there, they get married. She died in 2009. This one did look like, I don't know, a, a very committed, loving relationship. So, uh, the first two ended in divorce. The third one, he was a widower. And then his fourth marriage was to Janine Russell.

[00:31:27] They got married in 2016. At the time, bill was 82. They were together until his death at age 88. So in his second memoir, he talks sort of uncomfortably about womanizing. I mean, I think that he is, uh, didn't have quite, have the. I don't know what word you want to use, escapades, because this is part of the reason I knew Wilt Chamberlain's name.

[00:31:50] Like when I was growing up Oh, because he was notorious, he was a notorious womanizer. Oh, his autobiography, he has some claim of sleeping with over, I forget how many women, but it was some, you know, very, very high

[00:32:00] Amit: number. It was in the thousands. Well, we got to

[00:32:02] Michael: talk about this, you made a statement, and, and, and, and, and, it's This statement's going to follow you around for a while, that you slept with 20, 000 women.

[00:32:08] And I, you know, I gotta say, that's uh, that's the kind of thing that you say, and then people bring it up

[00:32:12] Amit: later on. Bring it up

[00:32:13] Michael: later on. It sounded like Bill Russell wasn't quite that kind of womanizer, but that there was a lot of being on the road, and a lot of, um, I don't know, womanizing. I mean, I think he kind of tries to come clean with it in his, uh, memoir.

[00:32:28] Yeah, I don't know. What do you want to say? I

[00:32:30] Amit: just, I don't quite get the pattern here. Um, there's four marriages, they're not too long lived except for the third. And, uh, it just, it doesn't track for me of somebody who is known to be so headstrong. Who is so big in his convictions and his protests and his role as, as a man and as a, and as a human being, uh, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to get into the insides of their marriage, but I'm just saying statistically, it just, it, it seems weird.

[00:33:02] It doesn't parallel the upstanding Bill Russell that we know about. That's

[00:33:06] Michael: interesting. I look at it a little differently. I think basketball is only kind of important when he enters the league in terms of it being, you know, important culturally in America. He changes that.

[00:33:20] Amit: Yeah, I mean, there were, to give a statistic for that, there were about 7, 000 or so people that attended a game at the time, as opposed to now 20 to 30,

[00:33:28] Michael: 000.

[00:33:28] Honestly, I think that, that whole experience, he lost his grounding and had a hard time finding his way back to it for most of the rest of his life. Yes. And I think that kind of, you know, I look at this marriage record as somewhat symptomatic of that. I don't know exactly why he and Rose divorced. I don't know why he divorced Dorothy, Miss USA.

[00:33:49] And then, you know, his third wife died at a young age prematurely from cancer. Um, he also... More in the 80s than in the 70s, becomes increasingly reclusive and shies away from the, from the limelight until the, the late 90s. I mean, I think he really wars with his sense of fame and celebrity for, you know, most of his adult life.

[00:34:11] Certainly most of his post basketball life or post basketball player life. So, I guess that's how I read this. I, I saw a man who was having a hard time staying tethered. That he's... You know, remembered as a kind of legend, but that he is very uncomfortable with any kind of lionization of his own status.

[00:34:30] And I think he's, like, active in wanting to, like, not have people view him that way. I think that's part of his reason for not wanting to sign autographs or participate in interviews and so forth. Yeah. He's a real interesting story in a way, in terms of grappling with his own fame and celebrity. Yeah, I mean, I

[00:34:49] Amit: think he'd be a tough husband, to be honest.

[00:34:52] I don't think I would necessarily want to be married to him. But my question that I posed earlier, am I incorrect at just like, it's seeming paradoxical. this, this wavy love life with what other characteristics we associate with Bill Russell? Or should I just leave it alone because you can never get inside the complications of a marriage and emotions and, and all of the inputs and burial.

[00:35:18] Bulls

[00:35:19] Michael: that can go into it? No, I think it is paradoxical, and I think he is partially self-aware. I think he's more self-aware than a lot of athletes of his stature. Okay. And you know, I mean, the other thing is like, he's not like bachelor number one necessarily. He has for marriages, but they are at least an effort to remain committed to an individual.

[00:35:39] Right. So it, it's, it's a little paradoxical and you see four marriages and you're like, eh, then it's not a great look. On the other hand, I don't know, one marriage fell apart. As his rocket ship of legendary icon status takes off. Another was to miss USA. Another one, you know, the third one, his wife died, and then, you know, getting married to a baby, too.

[00:36:00] That one kind of feels like I just don't want to be alone as I really, really age. I don't know. I don't know. I see a complicated story. I also see a complicated man. And I just don't think it's that simple.

[00:36:13] Amit: I think you hit the nail on the head. We've got to... I'm a complicated man that I think the, the headlines, the first lines, et cetera, don't summarize well enough.

[00:36:22] Michael: Yes. Okay. Let's move on. Category five. Net worth. I got my number on it. Ten million dollars. He got ten million. Yes.

[00:36:31] Amit: Let the, let the balloons fall from the rafters that were supposed to fall in the 1969 series against the Lakers. So,

[00:36:38] Michael: something that really needs to be, right, nice, nice call back. One of the things that needs to be sort of pointed out here is the salaries.

[00:36:46] Did not achieve, you know, next level status until the 70s and way more in the 80s. So, there is this famous story where Wilt breaks the boundaries and signs for 100, 000, signs a contract for 100, 000 a year. Yes. And Bill Russell says, Alright, I want 100, 001. Yes. You know, and, okay, after his, uh, NBA player career, he does become the first black coach, that's very important, player coach.

[00:37:12] Then he also goes on to be an NBA analyst, he takes on a few coaching jobs, the Seattle Supersonics and then later the Sacramento Kings. There's a lot of endorsements. Like, he's in a lot of commercials. And then, I also sound like I saw an interview he did where it sounded like he was doing a tremendous amount of motivational speaking.

[00:37:32] Yeah. You know, I was glad he got to 10 million. This is one of the greatest players of all time. That's a great number. It sounded like he lived well. He drove a Lamborghini when he left Boston. He lived on Mercer Island in Seattle for, you know, most of the last few decades of his life. I think he's doing pretty well.

[00:37:50] So overall, I was pretty happy with 10 million. Yeah,

[00:37:53] Amit: totally. I think if, if he were 20, 30 years younger, it would have been a gigantically different number. Most players. prior to Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain had to have other jobs in the off season in order to make ends meet. Yeah.

[00:38:08] Michael: Uh, okay. Next category?

[00:38:09] Yep. Category six, Simpsons Saturday Night Live or Halls of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or The Simpsons, as well as impersonations. I

[00:38:20] Amit: was very unprepared for what you're about

[00:38:22] Michael: to unveil. Hosted Saturday Night Live in 1979. You know, it's, it's really a pleasure for me being here tonight.

[00:38:32] Because I'm hosting my favorite show, Saturday Night Live. And, uh,

[00:38:40] a successful television show is not that different from a successful basketball team. Everyone has to work together to make the best show possible. Like any team, you got to have the guy in the middle. The money man! Well, see, on this show, that guy is the host.

[00:39:05] I don't know. For me, there's an asterisk on hosting SNL in the 70s because I don't think that they had sorted out the hosting thing exactly. I think that it was after Lauren comes back in the mid 80s where the host is sort of a little bit more of a formal position where it's like, who's the most famous person at the moment?

[00:39:23] Yes. The system seems a little bit more hammered out. 1985 and onward.

[00:39:28] Amit: It was much more of a current event popularity contest after that, but, but remove your asterisk, sir. Give these people credit where it's due. But

[00:39:36] Michael: that's kind of incredible, and I, I, it's the only time I honestly see any reference to his sense of humor other than the cackle, other than the laugh, you know?

[00:39:46] Amit: Yeah. Yeah, well, he did do Laugh In, which is how he met Lorne Michaels, which led up to the Saturday Night Live thing. Oh, I didn't see that. Did he do Laugh In? Yeah. He did Miami Vice in 84. I saw that. And Biloxi Blues, uh, starring 88. So he, he had that side of, like, trying to be a humorist. But I think, I think most of the time he was just a guy that just, like, Laughed a lot and laughed out loud.

[00:40:10] He was more the appreciator of the jokes or the irony of a situation than he was actually the one making the comedy. Yeah.

[00:40:19] Michael: So anyway, hosted Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, I saw nothing on The Simpsons. No appearance on Arsenio Hall, but it is worth noting they share a birthday. Both born February 12th.

[00:40:29] Oh, really? OK. Halls of Fame, uh, obviously the Basketball Hall of Fame, the, one of the, I think is, is he the only NBA player to have his number retired league wide, not just by the Celtics?

[00:40:41] Amit: Correct, and that just happened a year ago. You know, that happened within months of his death.

[00:40:46] Michael: Nobody wearing the number six going forward in the NBA.

[00:40:49] Yeah, including

[00:40:49] Amit: LeBron James, who his grandfather didn't.

[00:40:52] Michael: Right. And then I think it's also worth mentioning he did win the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award for a civilian, which he got from Obama in 2011.

[00:41:00] Amit: Yeah. Well, in Hall of Fame, it's worth noting that he's a double inductee, both as a player and then later as a coach, two completely different ceremonies.

[00:41:08] Uh, this is kind of a new, a new slant to the category, to actually have an honor named after you. The MVP of the NBA Finals is called the Bill Russell

[00:41:18] Michael: MVP. Yeah, and he handed it out for a number of years. There's all these pictures of him handing it over to these, like, basketball greats with a big smile on his face.

[00:41:25] Yeah. That's pretty cool to have a trophy named after you. Yeah,

[00:41:28] Amit: that's

[00:41:29] Michael: awesome. Like, I think he is a very famous person to anybody who follows the NBA, but somehow he is not. remembered kind of like as important as Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant. And I think the Wilt Chamberlain thing is the more important piece that somehow we know Wilt's name more than we know Russell's name.

[00:41:52] That's weird.

[00:41:52] Amit: I, I think that stage presence, it was a characteristic of the person. He didn't want the fanfare as much. He didn't want the name recognition and, uh, it was just about the game to him. And I think for that, like his fame took a hit, but also like, so what?

[00:42:08] Michael: Yeah. No, no. I mean, I think actually, if anything, it's desirable.

[00:42:11] I think it is as a result of his actions that we don't know his name. He could have been. Forever lionized in a way that we would know his name forevermore, had he wanted it to be that way.

[00:42:24] Amit: Yeah, and I should say this. Like you just said a moment ago, it's desirable. I think it really is. It's a level of fame that seems nice.

[00:42:30] You know, that you're the king of the NBA for 12, 13 years. You coach on and off, but you're still able to be a recluse later in life and pop in on key moments when needed. And your influence is still life lasting, but you don't have the pressures of consistent fame and paparazzi.

[00:42:47] Michael: Yeah, alright, uh, category 7, over and under in this category we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year somebody was born to see if they beat the house odds and look for signs of graceful aging.

[00:43:00] So, the life expectancy for a man born in the US in 1934 was 59. 3 years. He died at 88, beat it by 29 years. So, first of all, crushed it. I also got a little curious because I had a memory of like, if you're As tall as he was, because he was 6'10 6'11 something like that. Mm hmm. I had thought that there was a relationship between height and longevity.

[00:43:24] Uh, and that the bigger you are, the more likely you are to die at a young age. That is true. I looked into this a little bit. And there's even a PLOS ONE, um, study, so that's a reputable journal, in 2017, that looks specifically at professional basketball players. And they do, on average, die at a younger age.

[00:43:44] Nobody exactly knows why. There's theories about caloric restriction. Shorter bodies have fewer cells, so tall people can have trillions more cells than shorter people. And this allows for greater exposure and impact of cells from free radicals and carcinogens. The fact that he made it to 88 is actually kind of amazing.

[00:44:02] I would also say that I considered, in the five things I love about you category, saying gracefulness. Like you watch him move on a basketball court, and he is a kind of levitate above the ground. The figure, the man looks like he was just built to play basketball. The grace was pretty astonishing and pretty cognitively with it for all those years.

[00:44:25] So yeah,

[00:44:26] Amit: the interviews that you see after 2010, like very articulate, very pinpointed memory. Like, it seems like he can describe, you know, what he was eating on a certain day when certain things happened. Uh, I mean, as recently as 2017, just five years before his death, he's tweeting in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick.

[00:44:44] You know, tweeting a picture of himself taking a knee. So, still remained active in social issues, um, and vocal right up until the end.

[00:44:53] Michael: I think he's just a really smart guy, and he keeps his brain very active, inasmuch as that's in, within his control. I know, it's

[00:44:59] Amit: funny, there's all these products and services around longevity.

[00:45:03] These days, and maybe the answer is just

[00:45:04] Michael: books. Books and, uh, Thanksgiving with Wilt, maybe, but yes. Yes, perhaps. Alright, overall I think very high marks for graceful aging. Um, let's take another break. Category 8, Man in the Mirror. What do we think this person thought of their reflection? And they saw it in the mirror.

[00:45:25] Amit: Everything. He thought everything of it. Gigantic, gigantic ego of this man. But

[00:45:31] Michael: ego can go the other way. Sometimes a big ego is often a mask for insecurity.

[00:45:38] Amit: That's true. So help me workshop the word. Ego is not

[00:45:40] Michael: right. I would actually extrapolate from the last category here. So I do think that a certain kind of insecurity can exist in very tall people the same way it can exist in very short people.

[00:45:51] And I even saw a, uh, interview with Dick Cavett where he's like, what's it like being a freak or something like that? And he's trying to make a joke and like, make light of how much shorter he is than Bill Russell. But I'm sure, I'm sure that's how it feels sometimes, you know, to be as tall as he is and to just like, the world is not built for you when you're that big.

[00:46:09] But enough of that. I know you're sick of being A big, tall freak.

[00:46:16] No, I'd rather like it. I guess you would. Being a big, tall freak. Yeah. And I'm gonna beat you up as soon as the show's over. I'm surprised you're waiting that long. That's wonderful control on your part. But then you have wonderful... I can't do it in front of witnesses. I think that there is... Something about his disposition that actually guards against heart attacks and that guards against the stress that may come with having a 6 11 body.

[00:46:43] All that is to say, I think he loved it too. I don't think it was exactly ego, but I do think it was... It was something like, not certitude, what's the word I'm looking for, groundedness.

[00:46:57] Amit: An inner groundedness, I think the word that I wanted to use instead of ego was self respect. So when I think he looked in the mirror, he looked at a person that deserved respect.

[00:47:06] And I think the examples of this are, you know, in 1961, there was a story, a legendary story that the Celtics were going to play a game in Louisville. And, uh, certain players weren't allowed to eat in the hotel coffee shop, and Bill Russell took some of his teammates, the other black teammates, and said, okay, we're just not gonna play.

[00:47:25] Right, so he looked at himself as somebody that is deservant of respect as a human being and stood for absolutely nothing that crossed that line. So when I think this man looks in the mirror, he looks at a person that is due every ounce of respect that can be afforded to

[00:47:44] Michael: him. I think both of us agree, high marks for Man in the Mirror.

[00:47:48] He loves it. Yep. Alright, next category, outgoing message. Uh, how do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail? Also, would they have the humility to record it themselves, or would they use the default setting on their voicemail?

[00:48:04] So everyone

[00:48:04] Amit: else loved it, uh, mainly for the laughter. So, like, Kareem Abdul Jabbar said that, like, any time that he met Bill Russell, the first thing he'd try to do is make him laugh just because he loved that laugh so much. But the voice is pretty solid, too. I mean, it's got this deep, kind of gravelly sound to it.

[00:48:19] It's a very admirable voice. Humility, we gotta talk about. Because there's this dance that we're talking about, like, ego wasn't an appropriate word. I like the word self respect. Where does humility fit into this guy?

[00:48:30] Michael: Yeah, uh, it's a good question. Because there is, obviously, a... Pride that exists and that is sort of immovable pride that is in the center of his soul.

[00:48:41] I think that there's also a sort of effort on his part to downplay exceptionalism as he experiences it while still holding forth to that pride and it's sort of the like central conflict. Yeah, um, I guess I'm extrapolating from the wouldn't sign autographs thing. I understood that Russell didn't sign autographs.

[00:49:03] But I also thought that, uh, I was in a different category, being a teammate and also a friend. And so I asked Russell in the dressing room before a game, would he sign a picture, simply because I was trying to get all of the teammates, the people I had played with, their pictures, and put it together in the group.

[00:49:22] And first thing he looked up and said was, Hatch, you know I don't sign autographs. So at first I thought he was joking. And then he said it a third and a fourth time, then I knew he was serious. That's how strongly he felt about the subject. I suspect he wouldn't have wanted to do selfies. I think he also probably wouldn't have left his name on the voicemail.

[00:49:43] On the other hand, I don't think that he was, like, isolated and disconnected. And I think, you know, if you're Wilt and you call up Bill and say, Hey, what's going on? You'd be a little pissed off. If it wasn't Bill's voice on the voicemail, it's actually a real toss up for me. I don't know. I, I, I went, no, I went, he would not leave his voice on the voicemail.

[00:50:03] Yeah. Because there's a little bit of ego winning out overall, but I don't think it's simple. Totally.

[00:50:10] Amit: So I, I also had no, and I went with this whole like won't sign autographs thing, but I think he tried to make himself accessible basically to everyone but Boston Celtics fans of the sixties because of how he was treated by some of them and by the media at large.

[00:50:27] Michael: That should be explained a little bit more. He said Boston like had all varieties of racism that you could imagine when I lived there. And there's this, you know, awful story about somebody breaking in, writing inflammatory words. Like on the wall and defecating in his bed.

[00:50:41] Amit: Yeah, like stealing his trophies and yes.

[00:50:44] Right.

[00:50:44] Michael: I mean, he experienced next level, you know, bare bones racism in Boston. And as soon as he retired, you know, he opted in a Lamborghini and moved to LA. And, you know, it did look like there was a little bit of making peace with Boston towards the end, kind of, but it's a contentious relationship.

[00:51:01] Totally.

[00:51:02] Amit: There's a Bill Buckner parallel in, in some ways. Um, for a different reason, but if we talk about humility and accessibility as being a proxy for it, you know, he also did things like this Medgar Evers. Yeah. So I think you hinted at it, uh, at the opening quiz. So when Medgar Evers was murdered in 63, within days Bill Russell went down, this was in Mississippi I think, and he held youth basketball camps for black kids and white kids.

[00:51:33] Michael: He, yeah. And when people ask him like, would you, you know, do you think black kids and white kids can play together? They're like, yeah, they can. My kids do. Why not? Yeah, I don't see why not.

[00:51:40] Amit: Totally. And so like that excess, like, and the a, a person of his rising stature to go into that zone when there is violence, there's rallies and he just wants to make himself accessible as a figure that he knows can change the discourse.

[00:51:59] Michael: There's a lot of athletes in the mid 20th century who were just sort of, like, dealing with the tumult of the 60s and the war in Vietnam at the same time that they're dealing with the new phenomenon of celebrity. And that has symbolic power and that should be deployed somewhere, but how? It's a kind of impossible question to answer when it also feels like the world is burning.

[00:52:23] That's where Ali was, and to some extent that's where Jackie Robinson was. That's where Hank Aaron absolutely was. Yeah. A hundred percent, you know, so I don't know. I mean, I, I think that's why this question is really hard to answer because You see a real struggle to do the right thing But still like I don't know there is no simple answer to that question.

[00:52:43] Yeah, you know complexity

[00:52:44] Amit: All

[00:52:44] Michael: right category 10 control z. This is where we look for the big do overs the things you might have done differently I came up blank here and when I saw him asked about it in an interview You know, do you have any big regrets? He's like, not really. I considered, you know, what was my Malkovich, that like, should you have played in the 68 uh, Eastern Conference Championship the day after Martin Luther King died.

[00:53:07] And, you know, he does seem to second guess that one a little bit. Yeah. I didn't see a big control Z though. I got

[00:53:13] Amit: one. So he wrote in one of his memoirs, uh, about his very last game ever, which was against the Lakers in the 1969 NBA championships, where Will Chamberlain got injured and took himself out of the game.

[00:53:27] Yes, I know where you're going with this. And then he derided Will Chamberlain, his friend, his thankgiving buddy, and said, uh, his words were, were, were, Will Chamberlain thinks he's a genius. He's no genius. And basically what he was saying is that he wasn't man enough to face me on the court that day for that final match, and that he did not have.

[00:53:45] The strength and the resilience to keep playing. And, uh And their

[00:53:49] Michael: friendship was fractured for a while.

[00:53:50] Amit: Long time. Long time. Yeah. Like decades. It took, it took a while to come back from that. And he said that he regretted saying that. To lose 20 plus years of friendship is a big deal.

[00:54:00] Michael: Yeah. That's a good one.

[00:54:01] I'm glad he called it out. That's an important one. Alright, second to last category, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. This may be a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake, or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them we're most curious about.

[00:54:20] All right,

[00:54:21] Amit: so I'm gonna go cocktail, um, there's these images that they show of Bill Russell with Red Auerbach when they're deciding who's gonna be the coach to be after Red Auerbach when ultimately Bill Russell was chosen to be the player coach and he's sitting there with a cigar like on the side of Boston Gardens and when I see a cigar I always think like I want a scotch with that, that's what I'm choosing to have with Bill Russell but what I want to talk about.

[00:54:46] It's not at all that, not the player coach. It's this theme that we talked about, about, uh, his relationship with Boston and his relationship with the fans. He felt very unwelcome at Boston, that even while he was winning these championships, most of the credit was still being given to Bob Cousy, who was the superstar that...

[00:55:04] preceded Bill Russell, but that, that was nothing. That was the media piece. There was the way the city treated on him. You talked about this horrific break in, but even in his suburb of Redding, Pennsylvania, they honored him as like the man of Redding. And then he decided he wanted to move further within Redding to a nicer neighborhood and there were boycotts.

[00:55:25] So while he is the hero of the Boston sports community. He is not being welcomed by his neighbors at all, and this is a man that just got more and more bitter and really hated this city. He referred to it in one of his memoirs of a flea market of racism. And you know, with that is where he started to detach himself from the fans.

[00:55:45] And later, you know, did not want people to attend his own Jersey retirement in Boston, or did not want to attend himself his Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1975. So what I want to know over cocktails is with a mature Bill Russell, with a Bill Russell in his 80s, looking back on all of it, I want to know if he thinks there was any other way to do it.

[00:56:09] If there was any other way to do the 60s or if he still feels that Distancing himself from the fan base and essentially just not being a person of Boston despite being in some way a hero of Boston I want to know with the benefit of age and wisdom it was there any other way to do

[00:56:26] Michael: that that's basically where my curiosity lands to he hovers for me right at the boundary of Celebrity and icon.

[00:56:36] I just have a lot of questions still. I'm leaning towards coffee because I do think that if given enough time and given the right setting where we can sit there and sort of like slowly talk some of this out because I feel like he goes 50 percent the way there in terms of giving the public necessary information to make sense of his story.

[00:57:04] And make sense of his life and for being able to draw certain life lessons, but I don't feel like he goes all the way there because I think he hits this like wall of confusion of it's not clear what to what's to be done with my story that I don't think he ever sort of like sorts out for us. But, but I feel like he could have pressed on it.

[00:57:24] I guess that's my point, is that I, above all else, see a lot of brains on this guy. I see, you know, an ability to envision a different world on the court and off the court. And I think that he does have a view of How pop culture and celebrity can be used for good measure if used the right way, but I want to know how he makes sense of that and of all those forces, because I think all of the things that he encountered were at a, like, sort of red hot point in history when he encountered them.

[00:57:58] But I also don't think that those lessons have gone anywhere. And so, you know, I would, I would want his help and sort of like, help me make sense of you and what you represent and why winning championships and being arguably the most dominant athlete in any sport of all time, why do we valorize that?

[00:58:15] What is the temptation around valorizing that? What are the pitfalls of that? And what would you have the rest of us do? It could be really fruitful, but it would actually take some real time to kind of... chip away at some of this stuff because there's a lot of just life events that have hardened him and have created certain walls, internal paradoxes that I'm not sure he sees and I'm not sure he even knows how to like surmount.

[00:58:39] So I'm going coffee. Okay. All right. Category 12 final category named after James Van Der Beek, who famously said in Varsity Blues, I don't want your life. Amit, based on everything we've talked about, do you want this life? I don't know where to begin.

[00:58:54] Amit: I do. So my, my initial reaction was the guy doesn't seem happy.

[00:58:59] All this autograph refusal, all this way he was treated, not wanting the limelight. That was my number one concern. It was like, what is the point of all this and winning all this stuff if you're not happy anyway? You know, you can do all these things and make all this impact, but if you just still don't feel good, what's the point?

[00:59:18] And that was my concern, but I think watching enough tape, listening to enough interviews, I did see a happy man, right? And I think the word, the word, the word that we used repeatedly was cackle. You cannot fake a cackle. This man had a very genuine laugh. He had a very friendly smile. You do not flip off your close friends and mentees on camera unless you're sort of a happy person doing it.

[00:59:44] This is not the same way as like M. I. A. did during the Super Bowl years ago. You know, this is a man that does it as a source of joy because he's seeing his friends and that's how he reacts. I think he was a happy person in the end. I think he had to go through a hell of a lot of turmoil to get there. I also think he had incredible meaning.

[01:00:03] Right. We started, we opened up and nobody opens up any conversation about Bill Russell was saying immediately he changed the way the game of basketball is played. And what was impressive to me is he changed it, not just in it being a horizontal to a vertical game, but he changed it as a way that you can still be an all star and you can still be a team leader and you can be the person that wins championships by setting up other people for scoring.

[01:00:28] Not by being the person that scored yourself. And man, is that a noble undertaking. So to be at the lead of basketball, to be at the forefront of civil rights, to be an example setter, to have, yes, this confusing second half of life. I get it, but I still see signs of happiness in it and there's a hell of a lot of meaning buried underneath.

[01:00:51] So yes, I want your life, Bill Russell.

[01:00:55] Michael: I think that's a good answer. I think I'm basically right there with you. I have a slightly different interpretation, maybe. Or maybe it's the same thing, just looked at from a different way. You know, when I was talking about, what is the combination of characteristics that leads somebody to be kind of the ultimate winner in a Michael Jordan sense, in a Wayne Gretzky sense, whoever it may be.

[01:01:17] I think that there is at least some component of that is an element of rage. I feel like you cannot be so hellbent on winning. Unless there is a fire somewhere that, that burns in you, and I'm not even 100 percent sure that's a problem. I don't think that's the whole story with Bill Russell, and I don't think he's a rageful person necessarily, but I do feel like that's a common denominator in these, you know, dominant winners.

[01:01:47] You used the word early on in this conversation, compartmentalize. And I feel like as his career goes on and as he experiences success, you know, he leaves when he's still very able bodied. He could have played another year. The fire had gone out. Some kind of fire had gone out in him and he knew it. And I think the reason he walked away from the game was because he was self aware enough to know I didn't have that thing that my team would need.

[01:02:13] So, all of that leads me back to the question you posed. Was the guy happy? Do I see fulfillment? Actually, yes, I think I do. The marriage record gives me some pause. But I think it kind of stabilizes towards the end. I think that the... Onus on him to have us make sense of his story. That's kind of not our problem.

[01:02:36] And I think he gave what he could in that regard. And I do see him as being largely of service, more than selfish overall. I think if you take it on balance in terms of what he gave the world and what he gave us. As fans, as a culture, as whatever, he was of service, and I think that that did lead to a long life with a tremendous amount of fulfillment.

[01:03:00] And I see joy in those eyes. Yeah. More than anything else, I see joy in those eyes. Good word. So I'm also a yes. I want your life, Bill Russell. Okay. Amit, you are Bill Russell. You've died, you've ascended to the pearly gates, standing before you is St. Peter, the Unitarian proxy for the afterlife. You have an opportunity to make your pitch.

[01:03:25] What was your grand contribution to this dream of life?

[01:03:29] Amit: St. Peter, they say I changed the game of basketball. There's an obvious way in which I did it, but there's a less obvious way. And the less obvious way is my unique. I think Don Nelson said it best, former NBA player, later a coach, but a contemporary of mine.

[01:03:45] He said there are two types of superstars. One makes himself look good at the expense of other guys on the floor, but then there's another type who makes the players around him look better than they are, and that's the type Bill Russell was. Let me in.

[01:04:05] Michael: Famous and Gravy listeners, we want to hear from you. We need people to participate in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity. You can email us at hello at famousandgravy. com. If you're enjoying our show, please tell your friends. You can find us on TwitterX, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads. Our handle is at Famous and Gravy.

[01:04:26] We also have a newsletter you can sign up for on our website, famousandgravy. com. Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.