Bill Russell's Hall of Fame no-show
50 years ago, he skipped enshrinement as first Black NBA player in Hall of Fame.
By Frederic J. Frommer
At the Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony a half-century ago this week, there was a notable no-show: Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, the first Black NBA player elected to the Hall.
The Hall enshrined Russell on April 28, 1975, along with three “old-timers,” as the New York Times described them. It was no surprise that Russell, who dominated the NBA as a ferocious center and led the Celtics to 11 NBA titles, wasn’t there. He had given his curt RSVP two months earlier.
“For my own personal reasons, which I don't want to discuss, I don't want to be a part of it,” Russell said in February 1975, stiffing the Hall, 90 miles outside of Boston in Springfield, Mass. “I’m not going. They know that. I've felt this way for many years.”
Although he didn’t elaborate, there was speculation in news stories that Russell, who was the coach of the Seattle Supersonics at the time, was protesting the fact there were no Black NBA players in the Hall of Fame. Many years later, Russell would confirm that was the reason.
(In 1972, the Hall inducted Bob Douglas, the Black owner and coach of a pre-NBA all-Black team, the New York Renaissance, but he was recognized as a “contributor,” not as a player.)
Russell’s longtime coach, Red Auerbach, said he was disappointed in Russell’s decision.
“It's the biggest honor you can get in the National Basketball Association, and besides, how many other people have been nominated for the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility?” he said at the time. But the coach added, “Russ is the single most devastating force in the history of the game. He's his own man. Let him do what he wants.”
In the ensuing years, many Black players would follow Russell into the Hall, including Elgin Baylor (1977), Wilt Chamberlain (1979), and Oscar Robertson (1980).
Adolph Rupp, an old-school former Kentucky coach who had been born at the beginning of the century, was ready to wash his hands of Russell.
“Why anyone would refuse defies understanding,” said Rupp, who led the Hall of Fame's honors committee. “If he insists on declining, he should not even be talked to about it in the future. I say if he doesn't want to be enshrined, forget about him.”
But the Hall wound up taking a far more open-minded approach, inducting him even though he was a no-show. As the Hall’s director, Lee Williams, said at the time, leaving out Russell, a five-time NBA MVP, “would be like going to the Baseball Hall of Fame and not finding Babe Ruth's plaque.”
“The National Basketball Association honored its greatest contributor Monday night and guess who didn’t come to dinner,” the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, wrote, in a play off the famous 1967 movie, “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,” about a white woman, played by Katharine Houghton, who brings home her Black fiancé, played by Sidney Poitier.
The Hall erected a 10-foot stained-glass window with Russell’s face, but it didn’t include any speeches on his behalf.
“We’re not supposed to comment and we’re not supposed to have any personal views on the matter,” said Rupp. “We had a meeting this morning and decided to let him speak for himself.”
Russell was an intensely private person who wasn’t much for the trappings of success, famously refusing to sign autographs. And in his 1979 autobiography, “Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man,” written with Taylor Branch, Russell indicated that aversion was a factor in his spurning the Hall of Fame.
“I have very little faith in cheers, what they mean and how long they will last, compared with the faith I have in my own love for the game,” wrote Russell. “The Basketball Hall of Fame is the biggest cheer of all, and it means testimonials, dinners, souvenirs and memories. As an ex-athlete, I don’t think that diet is good for me, or for my relationship with others.”
In November 2019, three years before his death at age 88, he said that, in fact, race did have a lot to do with his 1975 decision. In a tweet revealing that he had finally accepted his Hall of Fame ring, in a private ceremony along with his wife and fellow Hall of Famers Bill Walton, Ann Meyers, and Alonzo Mourning, he said:
“In ‘75 I refused being the 1st black player to go into the @Hoophall. I felt others before me should have that honor. Good to see progress; ChuckCooperHOF19” – referring to Chuck Cooper, the first Black player drafted into the NBA, in 1950, who had been inducted earlier in 2019.
Russell had to deal with racism as a child, and then as a pro basketball player, both on and off the court, and was too proud to seek acceptance from white Americans.
Back in 1963, at the height of his career, he told Sport magazine, “There are two societies in this country, and I have to recognize it, to see life for what it is and not go stark, raving mad. I don’t work for acceptance. I am what I am. If you like it, that’s nice. If not, I couldn’t care less.”
Frederic J. Frommer, a writer and sports and politics historian, has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine and other national publications. He is the author of several books, including “You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals." Follow him on X and Bluesky.
Bill Russell was Basketball’s Jackie Robinson. As a young boy, I idolized him. Still do. People of great character and integrity are very few and very far between and generally misunderstood. That a notorious racist like Adolph Rupp advocated “forgetting” Bill Russell says it all - much like our present “leadership” would forget the Jim Crow lunch counters, the fire hoses and the dogs of Bull Connor. May we never forget. RIP, Russ.
When I was a kid, there were no teams anywhere near where we lived. We adopted the Celtics and Bill Russell was our all-time favorite. He stood by his principles in a world and a time when that could get you killed.