The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball

by John Taylor

  The two men, realizing that it was now habit more than bitterness that had kept them apart, that they were too old for feuds, sat in adjacent booths chatting with each other as well as with fans, Russell’s distinctive cackle erupting periodically. Russell had always liked to be one up on Chamberlain, and he managed to accomplish that on this afternoon as well, signing some five hundred autographs for a reported $120,000, while Chamberlain, who’d given his autograph to almost anyone who asked over the years, signed one thousand but earned only $40,000. Russell, who left first, invited Chamberlain to dinner, but Chamberlain joked that Russell’s tight schedule wouldn’t give Chamberlain the opportunity to eat all the food he would want to order if Russell was paying the bill.

  After that, the two men began talking from time to time by telephone—as regularly as a couple of old ladies, Chamberlain liked to tell people—the calls usually initiated late at night by Chamberlain, who would call Russell “Felton,” while Russell called his old rival “Norman.” Their conversations ranged over just about every conceivable topic, but they never discussed the question that almost invariably arose whenever either one of them was interviewed, or even just buttonholed in an airport by a fan: which of the two had been the greater player.

  Then in 1997, Bob Costas jointly interviewed Russell and Chamberlain before the all-star game and Russell finally made a public but limited and oblique apology for calling Chamberlain a quitter almost thirty years earlier.

  “I said something I shouldn’t have said,” Russell told Costas. “I was wrong.”

  “What was that?” Costas asked.

  “I’m not going to go into it,” Russell said. “What I said was wrong and injurious to him. I apologized to him.”

  Having made peace with Chamberlain, all that awaited Russell now was a reconciliation with his true antagonist, the city of Boston. From the mellowed vantage point of late middle age, Russell had begun to have different feelings about the city he had disliked as long as he had played there. In Boston he had been surrounded by teammates who had enabled him to be as good as he was and to win as often as he had. Had he played on any other team, he probably would not have been as successful as he was. That team—Cousy, Sharman, Heinsohn, K. C. Jones, and later Havlicek, Sam Jones, Satch Sanders—had perfectly complemented his daunting but limited talents. If the Rochester Royals or the St. Louis Hawks had drafted him, he might have been an also-ran, just as he might have ended up a shipyard welder if USF’s scout Hal DeJulio had not happened to catch his final game for McClymonds High back in 1952. The NBA team he did wind up playing on was assembled by Red Auerbach, and so it was safe to say that without Auerbach there might have been no Bill Russell—at least the Bill Russell who the Professional Basketball Writers Association of America decided in 1980 was the greatest player in the history of the NBA. But without Walter Brown there would have been no Red Auerbach, and without the city of Boston there would have been no Walter Brown. So Russell now realized he had been wrong all those many years ago when he said he owed the public nothing. The city’s fans—the Corner Boys—had supported the team through those precarious years in a way that the fans of a lot of those early clubs—Washington, D.C., or Chicago, to give two examples—had not supported their teams.

  And so it came about in 1999 that Russell agreed to return to the Celtics’ new arena, the FleetCenter, to have his number officially retired once again, this time in a public ceremony. Proceeds from the benefit would go to the National Mentoring Partnership, a foundation in which both he and his daughter, Karen, were involved. Some 10,000 fans bought tickets to the event, and special guests sat at sixty-five tables set up on the floor of the court. The tribute lasted three hours. Bill Cosby and Bryant Gumbel served as emcees, Cosby acknowledging that for most of the sixties, the Celtics had no equal on the court. “I have trouble saying this because I am from Philadelphia,” he said, and when the name of the rival city provoked reflexive boos, he added, “I don’t know why you’re booing me. You won everything.”

  Johnny Mathis, Russell’s old classmate from McClymonds High School, sang. Russell had bought Hal DeJulio’s airplane ticket to Boston, and he listened from one of the tables. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Cosby said at one point. “None of us would be here if it weren’t for one man—stand up, Hal DeJulio!” Red Auerbach, who by then was eighty-one years old and still smoking cigars, sat nearby. Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, and John Havlicek all offered tributes. Russell usually wore only two of his championship rings, from his first year, 1957, and from his last, 1969, and now members of those two championship teams appeared in the lights. So did Wilt Chamberlain. He had flown in on the red-eye from California, and he graciously deferred to Russell, pointing out that in eight postseason matchups with his great rival, Chamberlain had prevailed only once. “A man,” he said, “can get an inferiority complex that way.”

  When Russell finally took the floor, as lanky as ever, his hair and goatee now completely gray, he was greeted by a five-minute standing ovation. Russell had been painfully embarrassed by all the effusive flattery at the beginning of the evening, but now he was overcome with emotion. He told the crowd that he had dreaded this moment because he was afraid he would cry. He particularly thanked Chamberlain. Wilt, he said, had been an integral part of his career, requiring him to improve as a player, and he had done so, just as his own presence had required Chamberlain to improve. Each had made the other better. He added that he had always tried to live the sort of life he thought he should live, and he thanked the audience for allowing him to be a part of their lives.

  And then, from the upper balcony, a single voice called out, “We love you, Bill!”

  The shouted declaration—reminiscent of that fan’s legendary cry to Bob Cousy on the night of his farewell in the old Garden—echoed among the rafters. There was a momentary pause that seemed longer than it was, and then Russell, in a choked voice, broke it.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  26

  FIVE MONTHS LATER, on October 12, 1999, Wilt Chamberlain’s groundskeeper, Joe Mendoza, arrived at ten-thirty in the morning at Chamberlain’s hilltop mansion in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. The house, built in the early seventies for $1.2 million, a price that at the time seemed astronomical, had redwood timbers, a soaring fieldstone chimney, geometric roof lines, cantilevered balconies, a chrome spiral staircase, a shower like a car wash, and a swimming pool that extended from the living room out to the patio. Now, however, the entire place was not only dated but worn and deteriorating; the redwood had dried out and split, the grout in the tiles was rotting, an earthquake had damaged the roof and cracked the pool and patio.

  Mendoza let himself into the house and saw Chamberlain lying on his bed. Mendoza thought nothing of it, since Chamberlain was in the habit of staying up late and sleeping late, and the groundskeeper went about his work. But when he returned shortly after noon, Chamberlain had not moved. Mendoza, alarmed, checked his body, and found that Chamberlain was not breathing. Mendoza called 911, and the paramedics who arrived seven minutes later declared Chamberlain dead of what appeared to be cardiac arrest. Mendoza then called Chamberlain’s attorney, Sy Goldberg, who immediately drove over to the house.

  The news, while shocking and upsetting, did not come as a complete surprise to Goldberg. Chamberlain had turned sixty-three only two months ago, and to many people he had appeared to be a tower of vitality, still trim and muscular, still working out, still talking about the possibility of going back to the NBA and how he might match up against Shaquille O’Neal. But Goldberg was one of the few people who knew that, in recent months, Chamberlain’s health had deteriorated sharply. He had a history of heart problems dating back to adolescence, and his heart had begun bothering him again earlier in the year. He had actually felt quite ill when he flew to Boston to attend the celebration for Bill Russell. In just the last two months, his heart had become so weak and irregular that he’d lost fifty pounds and was scheduled to have a pacemaker implanted.

/>   On top of that, an osteoarthritic condition made him walk with a limp, and he was also scheduled to have hip-replacement surgery. And then there were the teeth, the ones that had been smashed into the roof of his mouth by Clyde Lovellette of the St. Louis Hawks, the notoriously dirty player who elbowed him—intentionally, Chamberlain always believed—in the chin during Wilt’s rookie year. The treatment he received back then—removing some teeth but not others—was inadequate, and the teeth that had remained had bothered him ever since. Just five days before he died, almost forty years to the month after the incident occurred, he’d finally had additional teeth removed, but the operation, he told a friend, had caused him the worst pain he’d ever experienced and left him so weak he felt like he was falling apart. When he had some friends and family over for dinner on Saturday night, two days after the operation, he was so short of breath he couldn’t climb the stairs without assistance. The body of the man considered by many to have been in his prime the best all-around athlete in the world was failing him rapidly.

  By the time Goldberg reached Chamberlain’s house, a local television station was reporting an unconfirmed story that Chamberlain had died, and the wire services immediately picked it up. The police, expecting reporters and curiosity seekers, were stringing yellow crime-scene tape across the driveway. Chamberlain’s body had not yet been removed, and Goldberg was there with it, in the bedroom, when his cell phone rang. It was Bill Russell, calling from who knew where, saying he had heard the rumors but there had as of yet been no official statement from Chamberlain’s family and he wanted to know from Goldberg: was it true?

  Goldberg told him that it was. Wilt had died, he said, probably sometime during the night, of what looked to be a heart attack. Russell, Goldberg could tell, was absolutely devastated. If the biggest tree in the forest can fall, Goldberg thought, the smaller ones are going to have to face the fact that they too assuredly will. But Goldberg knew that it wasn’t just the intimation of his own mortality that Russell found so shattering. He suspected there was also some remorse for his harsh criticism of Wilt thirty years earlier. Goldberg knew that the criticism had cut to the quick, wounding Chamberlain deeply, and when the two men did finally start talking again, just a few years earlier, it seemed to Goldberg as if they were pretending to be friends without having repaired the damage. Chamberlain, Goldberg knew, had never forgiven Russell. So maybe, Goldberg thought, Russell’s grief was tinged with a little guilt. And then there was the simple fact that Chamberlain and Russell had each made the other who he was.

  Russell was in Boston on business when he had heard the news, and he called Goldberg. He was too shaken to talk to any of the reporters who telephoned the office of the Boston Celtics asking for comment. And not just shaken, but damaged in a way that felt irreparable. Chamberlain, who was two years younger than Russell himself, had always seemed larger than life, both literally and figuratively, a vigorous, tireless, opinionated giant—a good two and a half inches taller than Russell—with supernatural athletic abilities, a gargantuan ego, and stunning appetites, but also a man who could be truly generous, loyal, funny, approachable, and unpretentious.

  But the loss Russell felt was not simply at the untimely death of an occasional companion and, on the basketball court, a formidable opponent. In a strange way, Russell felt that Chamberlain was the only person who had ever really understood him, and that he was the only person who had ever really understood Chamberlain. No one else had gone through what the two of them had gone through. No one else knew what it was like to be, all at once, a black man, and so tall that newspaper reporters regularly referred to you as a giant, and the best at what you did, and wealthy and famous—the first black superstar athletes outside of boxing—but at the same time to live in a segregated society, where in one entire region of the country, when the two of them were starting their careers, they couldn’t stay in the same hotel as the white rookie benchwarmers who carried the equipment, and where, even in their hometowns, they knew that some of the fans rooting for them wouldn’t want them living next door. No one else had ever been through all that.

  A few days after Chamberlain’s death, a memorial service was held at the City of Angels Church of Religious Science in the Marina del Rey section of Los Angeles. Some eight hundred people attended, and ushers set up giant television screens outside the church to accommodate the overflow crowd. Inside, bouquets of flowers crowded the altar, along with oversize photographs of Chamberlain in basketball uniform. Jazz played on the church’s speakers as the mourners filed in. Jerry West was seated up front near Elgin Baylor. Chet Walker and Billy Cunningham were there from the 76ers team that had given Chamberlain his first championship, and so was Alex Hannum, its coach. Nate Thurmond, who played with Wilt during his stint on the San Francisco Warriors, and Al Attles, who’d been on Wilt’s team the night he scored the one hundred points in the game against the Knicks, both came, and so did Bill Walton and Jim Brown. Then Bill Russell filed in, dressed formally, moving slowly and deliberately, as regal as ever.

  Meadowlark Lemon, who’d been a Harlem Globetrotter the first year Wilt toured with the team, had become an ordained minister, and he led off the service. He told the mourners that Wilt Chamberlain had been a happy man who loved life, and so the service was to be not a sad occasion but a happy one, a celebration. Various speakers joked about Chamberlain’s argumentativeness, his late-night phone calls, his claim to have slept with twenty thousand women, which, as every male in America who had done the calculations knew, worked out to an average of 1.5 women a night every night of every year from the age of fifteen onward. Barbara Lewis, one of his four sisters, said he had been a big mouth even as a small child, once asking a freeloading neighbor why she always dropped by at dinnertime. Tom Hawkins, a former Laker, said Wilt Chamberlain, not Michael Jordan, owned the record book. In addition to the one-hundred-point game, he said, there was, just to mention two of the more choice statistics, the season Wilt averaged more than fifty points a game and because of overtimes played an average of forty-eight minutes and thirty seconds per game even though a regulation game has forty-eight minutes.

  Throughout the recollections, Al Attles, one of Wilt’s closest friends dating back to the days when they both played for Eddie Gottlieb’s Philadelphia Warriors, wondered what Bill Russell would say. Not only had Attles played in some of the epic battles between Russell and Chamberlain, he was well aware of the long, bitter feud between the two men. As far as Attles knew, Russell had never uttered the genuine, heartfelt apology that Chamberlain felt he was owed, and when finally Russell rose to speak at the service, he did not offer one now. But, without referring directly to the feud, he said that he and Chamberlain had talked regularly in recent years. Age had made them both more forgiving.

  Pausing, Russell looked out at the audience. It was true, none of his and Chamberlain’s disagreements mattered now. What mattered, what remained, were those moments of intensity on the court thirty to forty years earlier, when he and Chamberlain each pushed the other to play harder and go higher than either had ever played or gone before. Russell had always insisted on viewing life from his own particular, even contrary, perspective, and he now said that while some people thought he and Chamberlain had made for the greatest rivalry in sports history, the truth was that they had not actually been rivals at all. Rivals tried to best each other, he explained, and neither he nor Chamberlain had been out to do that. They each had different objectives. Chamberlain was interested in statistics and he, Russell, in victories, and both of them had reached their respective goals without doing so at the expense of the other. The fact was, they loved playing against each other more than anything. They loved the competition. “The fierceness of that competition,” Russell said, “bonded us for eternity.”

  END NOTES

  1*In 2002, Phil Jackson won his ninth championship as a coach, tying Auerbach’s record, but he had done so with two teams, the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers.

  2*None of th
ese untested players were of course starters. Lloyd was the first one of them to be sent into a game, and to him goes the honor of being the first African American to play in the sport that in the decades to come would create so many African American superstars.

  3*Part of the Celtics legend, repeated by Cousy himself in his later years, was that he refused to sign with any team but Boston, but contemporaneous accounts and his own 1957 memoir, Basketball Is My Life, contradict him.

  4*Another part of the Celtics legend, repeated without sourcing in numerous books, is that Brown drew third, but in a 1960 interview with Sport magazine, he stated that he drew second.

  5*In later years, when the Russell trade had become encrusted with mythology, Harrison’s failure to pick Russell would come to be seen as a colossal misjudgment that changed sport history, and Harrison himself, turning defensive, liked to claim, without any evidence, that Russell had intentionally played poorly during that all-star game because he knew Harrison was in the audience and hoped to avoid being drafted by the Royals. Auerbach, meanwhile, claimed that Walter Brown got Harrison to pledge not to draft Russell by promising to allow the Ice Capades to perform in Rochester two weeks a year. But Harrison always denied this, pointing out that the Ice Capades were already playing in Rochester, and Brown never mentioned it in interviews he gave over the years. What clearly happened is that Harrison had underrated Russell’s ability after seeing him only once and, since he already had an excellent rebounder in Maurice Stokes, made the logical decision to opt instead for Sihugo Green.