Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell on life beyond basketball

“I could have a burning ambition to give my kids a million dollars,” said Russell in a 1963 interview. “If I gave them that alone, I’d be giving them nothing.”

Though Boston Celtics Hall of Fame big man Bill Russell paved the way for so many after him to use the platform as a star athlete to speak out, he did not think much of the sport’s societal impact.

“I don’t consider anything I have done as contributing to society,” said Russell in a 1963 interview with Sports Illustrated’s Gilbert Rogin.

“I consider playing professional basketball as marking time, the most shallow thing in the world,” he added for good measure, drawing a red line between what he does as a player and the bigger issues such as race and inequality that he fought against throughout his life.

“They say I owe the public this and I owe the public that. What I owe the public is the best performance I can give, period,” he offered.

“We’re a bunch of grown men playing a child’s game,” Russell said. It’s a child’s game we’ve made into a man’s game by complicating it. Silly, isn’t it? … I’m also a silly man because I enjoy it.”

Even so, the Louisiana native believed life beyond the sport was what mattered.

“(T)he contribution I’d like to make as a person — to my kids and little Black kids all over the world — is to make life better, so their ambitions aren’t stifled when they face the world, to give them the opportunity to do what they’re most skilled at,” he explained.

“I could have a burning ambition to give my kids a million dollars. If I gave them that alone, I’d be giving them nothing.”

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