The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball
Page 51
Since the NBA continued to struggle into the sixties, its teams were eager for the publicity that newspapers could provide, and sportswriters then had a level of access that is the envy of contemporary journalists. I am particularly indebted to the dozens of reporters and magazine writers in Boston and Philadelphia and San Francisco and Los Angeles—Milton Gross, Bud Collins, Joe Looney, Jack Kiser, George Kiseda, Ed Linn, Leonard Shecter, Arnold Hano, Dick Friendlich, Mal Florence, Bob Ottum, to name a few—who watched the games courtside, visited the dressing rooms afterward, rode the buses and planes with the teams, and ate and played cards and went drinking with the players.
I am grateful to Michael Richman, his son Ike Richman, and Joe Ruklick for introducing me to players as well as answering my questions; to Robin Deutsch of the Basketball Hall of Fame for allowing me access to its archives, which included notes and correspondence; to Ed Kosner, former editor of the New York Daily News for allowing me to do research in its files; to the staffs in the microfilm rooms of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, and the Philadelphia Public Library; to Shirley Figgins for passing questions to her ill boss, Franklin Mieuli; to Bob Cousy’s assistant, Helena Hacket; to Laura Planklett in Jerry West’s office; and to my editor, Jon Karp, and my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for their support. Most of all I’d like to thank my wife, Jeannette Walls, for her enthusiasm and encouragement.
The literature on the National Basketball Association in the fifties and sixties includes memoirs—and sometimes multiple memoirs—by Red Auerbach, Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, John Havlicek, Bill Russell, and Jerry West, among others. All authors are indebted to those who have preceded them, and these memoirs were extremely useful to me, as were Dan Shaughnessy’s Seeing Red, Bill Libby’s Goliath, George Sullivan’s Wilt Chamberlain, and two oral histories, Charles Salzberg’s From Set Shot to Slam Dunk and Terry Pluto’s Tall Tales. Through the Freedom of Information and Privacy acts, I was able to obtain the FBI files on both Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Statistics, scores, and pertinent facts were checked with The Official NBA Encyclopedia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN TAYLOR, a journalist for more than two decades, has been a contributing editor at New York magazine and a senior writer for Esquire. He is the author of four books, including, most recently, The Count and the Confession, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Falling, which Entertainment Weekly ranked as one of the five best nonfiction books of 1999. He lives on the eastern end of Long Island with his wife, Jeannette Walls.
ALSO BY JOHN TAYLOR
The Count and the Confession
Falling
Circus of Ambition
Storming the Magic Kingdom
Copyright © 2005 by John Taylor
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, John.
The rivalry : Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the golden age of basketball / John Taylor.
p. cm.
eISBN 1-58836-496-8
1. Russell, Bill, 1934– 2. Chamberlain, Wilt, 1936– 3. Basketball players—United States—Biography. 4. Sports rivalries—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
GV884.A1T39 2005
796.323'092—dc22
[B] 2005042797
www.atrandom.com
v1.0