0:01 [SPEAKER_00]: When Hall of Fame in B.A. 0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: coach, Phil Jackson was asked which player he would choose first overall for his own personal dream team. 0:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He paused for a moment to think it over. 0:12 [SPEAKER_00]: When you know the players he's coached, his knee to step back and reflect is easy to understand. 0:18 [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. 0:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Shaquille O'Neill, Scotty Pippin, Paral Malone, and the list goes on. 0:26 [SPEAKER_00]: These are not just good players. 0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: These are some of the best athletes in history, Michael and Kobe are often considered the best basketball players ever. 0:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But thinking back over his career and some of the most talented rosters any coach has ever had, Jackson chose none of them. 0:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He chose a center from the 1960s, the Dark Ages of NBA history, 0:50 [SPEAKER_00]: who averaged only 15 points a game. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Being something of an NBA fan, I completely agree with him. 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Why? 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Because Bill Russell is the greatest winner, and one of the greatest people in the history of American sports, he won 11 championships and also won the admiration of teammates and opponents alike throughout his career. 1:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who loves basketball and knows the history of the game loves Bill Russell. 1:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I can make you like him too. 1:20 [SPEAKER_00]: By sharing one brief story, but even die hard fans have probably never heard. 1:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The only reason I know this story is because it's from my hometown of Marion, Indiana. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: From the one time that Bill Russell happened to visit there, he was in town to play an exhibition game against the pistons, who were at the time, still the Fort Wayne pistons. 1:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, Marion was so thrilled to host the great Boston Celtics that the mayor presented their leader, Russell, with a key to the city in a lavish ceremony downtown. 1:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Later that night, Russell went out 2:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Two of whom were African-American, like Russell, Braun, the one white man in the group, later recounted what happened. 2:08 [SPEAKER_02]: The place sad about 40, but there was like 10 people inside. 2:12 [SPEAKER_02]: The host has looked at us and said, all tables are reserved. 2:16 [SPEAKER_02]: All the barstools were empty, so we started walking in that direction. 2:19 [SPEAKER_02]: Then she said, sorry, those are reserved too. 2:22 [SPEAKER_02]: Huh, we got the message and left. 2:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It turned out that the city that Russell had just been given a ceremonial key to, with still heavily segregated, but before going back to their hotels for the night, he told the team, they had one stop left to make the mayor's house. 2:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Russell proceeded to wake the mayor up in the middle of the night to give him back his key to the city, when the mayor finally appeared at the door. 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: groggy-eyed and entirely confused. 2:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Russell simply said, it doesn't work, before handing it over and walking off his porch. 2:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I love this story, it's so poignant and also quite funny. 3:02 [SPEAKER_00]: While discussing this with a local history professor and friend Dr. Mark Smith, who initially brought it to my attention, he recalled another similar story from Lexington, Kentucky. 3:13 [SPEAKER_01]: A similar story also that they were going to play an exhibition game in Lexington, Kentucky, and a couple of the players. 3:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I think it was Sam Jones and Casey were denied service at the hotel and they went and told Russ and they organized their own little boycott and the black players on the Celtic team went to the coach, read our back and told Red, where I go play an exhibition game tonight, where flying back to Boston. 3:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And he tried to talk about it, took him to the airport, so he could talk to him some more. 3:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But finally, when they got to the airport, Bill's admiration and love for Red Arbach was such that Red knew that we felt like we needed to take a stand on this. 3:52 [SPEAKER_01]: And finally, he was just supportive. 3:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's no repercussions, there's no fine, there's no penalty just the support of your coach at a time when 4:02 [SPEAKER_01]: that, and I think that was actually part of the great success of the Celtics was this rapport they had between the coach and the players who understood something, Red always talked about, you grow up a Jewish kid in New York who faced his own animosities and anti-Semitism, and he 4:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Russell would talk about that and it was something that they shared and gave red perhaps an insight and an understanding that was unusual for most coaches of the NBA at the time. 4:30 [SPEAKER_01]: But respect for, because Russell said he just he always treated us like and, you know, would walk through hell at a gasoline suit for that man, but the way that they felt about red and his support for the issues that they faced, not just on the court, but off the court 4:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Red was awesome too, way ahead of his time. 4:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The first NBA coach were executive to draft a black player in the first to have an all-black starting lineup in 1964 and when Red retired, he made his favorite player Bill Russell, the first ever black head coach in NBA history, way back in 1966. 5:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Once you become aware of Russell, you start to see him in unexpected places. 5:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometime go back and look at a picture of Mohamed Ali, from the so-called ally summit, in 1967, on his right shoulder, sitting in front of Martin Luther King Jr. 5:28 [SPEAKER_00]: There's another man who looks somehow equally imposing. 5:32 [SPEAKER_00]: That's Bill Russell. 5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: In another photo, you see a giddy Barack Obama reaching up, reaching up to put the metal of freedom, the highest civilian honor in America around his hero's neck. 5:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, Bill Russell. 5:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But for me, the most unexpected place will always be this story from the courthouse, a few blocks from my house. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a great story, with a lesson for all of us. 5:57 [SPEAKER_00]: We live in a time, with much ado, about grand symbolic gestures. 6:01 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of banners, a lot of signs and slogans. 6:05 [SPEAKER_00]: There's parades and paintings in the street. 6:07 [SPEAKER_00]: All of this is relatively easy compared to the hard work of actual change. 6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's nothing more than the equivalent 6:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Of handing someone a big useless quote, key to the city. 6:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The Russell story reminds us that if you were going to go through the pump in circumstance of handing out a key to your city, you have to first be sure to change the locks. 6:29 [SPEAKER_00]: First, change your culture, and also change your heart.
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