Bill Russell: 'How I Psych Them'

thanks for posting this article

imo, this is what made russell so great-- the head games PLUS his [B][U]indomitable will [/U][/B] to win

(his super long arms didnt hurt either)

When I had the opportunity to speak with Russell the one basketball question I asked him was about his approach to blocking shots; understanding that you can only block and only challenge so many shots and also about blocking the ball softly to a team not and not out of bounds. I asked him why if he essentially invented the block shot why no on else improved on it since. (Like dribbling and shooting strategy which have greatly evolved)

He said it was because he had perfected it long before people even realized what he was doing. He said there is no better way to approach blocking shots and he knew that because he spent 15 years trying to think of one.

[QUOTE=griffmoney2084]to make a long storey short


Bill Russell - "Me me me me me, me me me. Me me, me me. Me? Me! me me! ME ME ME ME!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RqWpWtY9vU[/url][/QUOTE]
Bill Russell is the very last all-time great who epitomizes a me-first attitute. From another thread (KAJ, DrJ, Russell):

"My junior year in college, I had what I thought was the one of the best college seasons ever. We won 28 out of 29 games. We won the National Championship. I was the MVP at the Final Four. I was first team All American. I averaged over 20 points and over 20 rebounds, and I was the only guy in college blocking shots. So after the season was over, they had a Northern California banquet, and they picked another center as Player of the Year in Northern California. Well, that let me know that if I were to accept these as the final judges of my career I would die a bitter old man. So I made a conscious decision: 'What I'll do is I will try my very best to win every game. So when my career is finished it will be a historical fact I won these games, these championships, and there's no one's opinion how good I am or how good other guys are or comparing things." And so as I chronicle my career playing basketball, I played organized basketball for 21 years and I was on 18 championship teams. So [B]that's what my standard is: [U]playing a team game[/U] and my team winning."[/B]

[url]http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/rus0int-1[/url]

I wonder how this article was received by his opponents. He shouldn't be giving out all his little tricks to the general public. Great read into the mind of the all-time winningest player.

PS I also love how in the Charlie Rose show (KAJ, Dr J, Russell thread), Russell said that he wouldn't trade playing in his time for playing now (even with all the money that these players make today).

I read this article a while back. I basically dedicated my summer to researching Russell's career and read a couple of biographies, several interviews, and multiple articles about him. The most compelling thing about this article here was his definition of "killer instinct." It sheds so much insight into how differently the game is viewed today from how it was viewed in Russell's day. In today's game we define a player as having killer instinct because he takes 15 shots in the 4th quarter alone, especially the potential game winner. Today we criticize a player for not having this quality because he passes the ball instead of shooting it in crunch time.

It's just so funny that Russell NEVER played like that. He was rarely ever called upon to take a game winning shot or to take over offensively, (Sam Jones did that), but he was yet said to possess more "killer instinct" than anyone else in his era. Studying Russell's approach to the game has completely changed how I understand basketball. I now see more than I did in the past that there are so many more ways to impact and dominate a game than by boosting your own stat line.

[QUOTE=jlip]I read this article a while back. I basically dedicated my summer to researching Russell's career and read a couple of biographies, several interviews, and multiple articles about him. The most compelling thing about this article here was his definition of "killer instinct." It sheds so much insight into how differently the game is viewed today from how it was viewed in Russell's day. In today's game we define a player as having killer instinct because he takes 15 shots in the 4th quarter alone, especially the potential game winner. Today we criticize a player for not having this quality because he passes the ball instead of shooting it in crunch time.

[B]It's just so funny that Russell NEVER played like that. He was rarely ever called upon to take a game winning shot or to take over offensively, (Sam Jones did that)[/B], but he was yet said to possess more "killer instinct" than anyone else in his era. Studying Russell's approach to the game has completely changed how I understand basketball. I now see more than I did in the past that there are so many more ways to impact and dominate a game than by boosting your own stat line.[/QUOTE]
Russell explained about his thoughts on this in a 9-part conversation he had with Tim Duncan.

[url]http://www.nba.com/spurs/multimedia/russell_duncan_pt1.html[/url]

The more I read about Russell the more I'm impressed with his attitude and approach to the game.

Russell's defensive dominance was likely equal to MJ's offensive impact. And both had a will to win that has been unequalled.

IMHO, the two greatest ever.

BTW, GOAT, you got to speak to Russell? What I would give to sit down with that man for an hour....

Bill Rusell: How I psyched everyone into believing I was great with 15 PPG on 42%.:oldlol:

still confuses how the hell did they win @ 69.

that's why i still consider anything below '73 is not the NBA we know to day.

[QUOTE=Jacks3]Bill Rusell: How I psyched everyone into believing I was great with 15 PPG on 42%.:oldlol:[/QUOTE]

You do realize that he shot 44% not 42% for his career, and that looking at that in context he actually shot above the league's average for his career. In addition to that his 44% is higher than hall of fame center/ forwards during his era such as Bob Pettit and Nate Thurmond. It's actually higher than Elgin Baylor's also. Finally, scoring points yourself is not necessarily the best way to impact the game. There is no greater connection between winning and having the league's best scorer than it is between winning and having the league's best rebounder or defender.

[QUOTE=john_d]still confuses how the hell did they win @ 69.

that's why i still consider anything below '73 is not the NBA we know to day.[/QUOTE]

The competition in the NBA from 1960-1971 or so is second only to the 80's and early 90's.

Remember in 1973 there were two leagues and three times the total number of teams and still no international players.

[QUOTE=Jacks3]Bill Rusell: How I psyched everyone into believing I was great with 15 PPG on 42%.:oldlol:[/QUOTE]

Too bad there is no real way to know how to quantify Russell's impact at the defensive end. I can give you an example, however. Wilt averaged 50 ppg in the 61-62 season. During the regular season, and against Russell, he averaged about 38 ppg. And he shot .506 against the league, and I believe Julizaver reported an error in Pollack's numbers, but that he shot .471 against Russell. In the post-season that year, Wilt only averaged 33 ppg against him. In Lynch's book on the '67 76ers, during the regular season Chamberlain averaged 24.1 ppg on .683 shooting. Against Russell he averaged 20.3 ppg on .549 shooting.

We also know that he not only blocked shots, perhaps 8 or more game, but that he intimidated shooters, as well. And Russell was one of the greatest rebounders ever, too. How many points did he prevent, by only allowing one shot? And, at the offensive end, how many second shot opportunities did he give his teammates?

There are other examples, too. Great outlet passes that may not have resulted in a basket by the person that he passed to, but perhaps that player's pass then led to an assist.

And, as Jlip alluded to, Russell had several seasons well above the league average in FG%. A .467 FG% in a league that shot .410 would be the equivalent of well over 50% in today's NBA.

Still, he had seasons of nearly 20 ppg (18.9) when he was probably the team's third or fourth option. Regul8r posted a ton of great offensive games by Russell, and I won't take the time to look them up now, but I do remember his 30-40 game seven in the 61-62 Finals (with 14-17 from the FT line.) And in the clinching game six win in the '61 Finals, he had a 30-38 game. One of the more amazing stats came in the '64-65 Finals, when Russell averaged 18 ppg, 29 rpg, and shot .702 (yes, .702) from the field. And in the 65-66 Finals, Russell averaged 23.6 ppg, which LED his team in scoring.

Incidently, and being a Wilt fan, I have come to believe that his 71-72 season was among his best ever. Yet, he only averaged 14.8 ppg (on .649 shooting.) His defense was sensational, and with his dominating rebounding and his brilliant outlet passing, the Lakers ran the league ragged with a blistering fast-break offense.

Walton was another that didn't post exceptional offensive stats, but yet his impact was all over the court. Ben Wallace, whose offense was nowhere near as skilled as Russell's, was a key reason that the '04 Pistons won the title.

Russell joined a team that had never sniffed a championship. They won a title in his very first year. Over the course of his 13 years, they won 11 titles. In the two that they did not win, Russell was injured in the post-season in one, and in the other, Russell was a first-year player-coach. He guided a 4th place team, that had been written off with an aged roster that went 48-34, to a title in his very last season. Oh, and BTW, Boston fell to 34-48 the very next year.

But, beyond all of that, think about this...

Russell played with multiple HOF teammates, several of whom were great offensive players (e.g Sam Jones, Havlicek, and Heinsohn), and all of them, to a man, would tell you that the Celtics won those 11 titles because of Russell. Furthermore, Russell won five MVP awards in his career, and had their been a Finals MVP for most of his career (it was started in his very last season ), he most assuredly would have won many of them. Not only that, but for all of Wilt's many records, Russell was almost universally accepted as the best player of his era, by players, coaches, and the media alike. In 1980, a Sportswriter poll ranked Russell as the greatest player of the NBA's first 35 years.

But, maybe they were all wrong.

studying your opponent, his weaknesses, strengths, tendencies, and exploiting his mental lapses or doing things to make sure he does get confused or intimidated or obsessed, anything to throw him off and out of his habitual zone. that's definitely an advantage in sports if you know how to do it. :applause:

There's no point in responding to Jacks3

regarding shooting %, well, they all shot low % in that era and before that. look at all their shooting forms. some are pretty wacky. evidently, they were far from the "standard" pretty looking shot that we know today. but you gotta give them more credit because when they were growing up and learning the game, there was no cable tv or vcr or shooting mastery dvds, so they didn't get spoiled like that with a set of foundation. they probably learned to shoot just by doing what's comfortable at the parks. no basketball camps to teach them methodical mechanics or whatever. that knowledge probably wasn't prevalent in those days.

[QUOTE=DCL]regarding shooting %, well, they all shot low % in that era and before that. look at all their shooting forms. some are pretty wacky. evidently, they were far from the "standard" pretty looking shot that we know today. but you gotta give them more credit because when they were growing up and learning the game, there was no cable tv or vcr or shooting mastery dvds, so they didn't get spoiled like that with a set of foundation. they probably learned to shoot just by doing what's comfortable at the parks. no basketball camps to teach them methodical mechanics or whatever. that knowledge probably wasn't prevalent in those days.[/QUOTE]

Actually, Jerry West had an almost perfect jump shot, as did Rick Barry. Yet, West had some awful FG% seasons early in his career. I still have not read a reasonable answer as to why FG% were so low in the early 60's, and then started a slow rise into the 70's, before they exploded in the 80's. So many players that played in both the 60's and 70's, either shot much better in the 70's, or at the very least, much better in the late 60's. Almost to a man.

All of which makes Chamberlain's numbers that much more staggering. He was shooting .510-.540 in most of his "scoring" seasons, and with much of his offense from 10-15 ft....in leagues that were shooting anywhere from .410-.441. And, then, in his "efficient" seasons of the mid-60's, and then in his last two seasons in the 70's, he was LIGHT YEARS ahead of the league average and his nearest competitor. No other player in NBA history can come close to just how far ahead of the league that he was. And one can only wonder what kind of FG% numbers he would have put up in his scoring seasons, had he played in the 80's (much less his efficent season numbers.)