Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Infrastructure week. at last.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Let there be snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

After roe, women are no longer free.

The willow is too close to the house.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Great Souls Leave Long Shadows: Nichelle Nichols / Bill Russell

Great Souls Leave Long Shadows: Nichelle Nichols / Bill Russell

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Great Souls Leave Long Shadows: Nichelle Nichols / Bill Russell

Not many people can make Charles Barkley, the former NBA MVP and legendarily outspoken broadcaster, pipe down. But the NBA icon Bill Russell, who died on Sunday age 88, once called Barkley and did just that.

“He called me. ‘Charles Barkley, this is Bill Russell.’ I said, ‘Oh hey, Mr. Russell,’” Barkley told me. “He said, ‘I need you to shut the fuck up.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

Russell had seen Barkley on television complaining about how much he paid in taxes. Russell was displeased with Barkley’s comments.

“[Russell] said, ‘Son, let me tell you something,” Barkley said. “‘You grew up poor. You went to public school, and I bet the police came to your neighborhood when somebody called the cops.’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Russell.’ He said, ‘Somebody was paying those people, and you didn’t have any money. I don’t ever want to see your Black ass on TV complain about taxes ever again.’ And I never did.”

Russell’s record—11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics—came to define winning. More than that, though, his fierce dedication to speaking out against racial injustice, his deep sense of integrity and righteousness, has long been considered the gold standard for athlete activism. Today, many Black athletes revere Russell and regard him as their north star…

… Russell and Chamberlain were among the pioneers in transforming the game into a more vertical show, one in which tall men with astounding leaping ability did unimaginable things in the air. Russell reserved most of his athleticism for practical purposes: rebounding and blocking shots. He combined his physical skill with his mind, studying the manner in which errant shots ricocheted off the rim and developing strategies for when and how to block shots…

In paying his respects Sunday, Michael Jordan said of Russell, “He paved the way and set an example for every Black player who came into the league after him, including me.” When Russell retired from the NBA in 1969, Jordan was 6. Abdul-Jabbar was about to enter the league the next season. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were 10 years from beginning their rivalry in the NCAA championship game. His heyday with Red Auerbach and Boston’s all-star cast was so long ago, and recency bias has diminished some appreciation of the enormity of his influence. But considering all that the NBA — and sports in general — has become, Russell belongs among a handful of the most significant athletic icons ever to walk the planet.

He was a defining sports figure during a defining time in American history, speaking up during the same era in which Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Jim Brown and Abdul-Jabbar refused to stay silent. Russell was 13 when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, and he used Robinson’s example as a blueprint for his career. When Robinson died, Russell was a pallbearer at his funeral. On July 19, Russell wrote his last message on Twitter, wishing Robinson’s widow, Rachel, a happy 100th birthday.

Eleven years ago, when President Barack Obama awarded Russell with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he reflected on the big man’s legacy.

“Bill Russell, the man, is someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men,” Obama said during the ceremony. “He marched with King; he stood by Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the Black Celtics, he refused to play in the scheduled game. He endured insults and vandalism, but he kept on focusing on making the teammates who he loved better players and made possible the success of so many who would follow.”…

From a thread full of lovely vignettes:

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Glad to see Bill Russell get a lot of respect, too.

    Are the original Star Trek episodes streaming somewhere?  Haven’t watched any, except one about Tribbles or something.  Um, must confess, in my house the shows to catch were Batman and Dark Shadows.

  2. 2.

    cain

    I never even heard of Bill Russell until now. So great to hear about these stories about `black athletes. Him, Mohammed Ali, and others really set the stone  – using their power for equity for Black Americans everywhere. Rest in Power.

    It’s such an interesting dynamic where a woman and a man, both had profound influence on black men and women and both dying the same day. Rest in Power, Nichols.

    ETA – and look at that – powerful comment, powerful position #2. YES!

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m so glad to see the tributes keep coming for these two giants. Thanks especially for sharing the Charles Barkley story (“I need you to shut the fuck up.” “Yes sir, Mr. Russell.”) and the Wilt Chamberlain T’giving dinner story. Priceless!

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    @cain:   Adam West and Burt Ward and Cesar Romero and … whoever played Alfred.  Bam!  Pow!  Batman aired after my bedtime (which was absurdly early), and was the show that I was allowed to stay up late for.  Only Wednesday evenings.

    Dark Shadows was a few years later.  My mom would watch that one with us.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    @Steeplejack:   Good to know.  Really should check them out.

    Wondering if maybe the county library has them on DVD or whatever, too.  They have The Wire on DVD, so shall be taking those out in a few weeks.  I miss so much of pop culture, not being much of a TV watcher.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    @SiubhanDuinne:   Loved both those stories.

    Meanwhile, FWIW, Mrs. Jackie Robinson (Rachel) just turned 100 on July 19th.  Good to have some pathbreakers still with us.

  9. 9.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: You forgot the sexiest of all – Eartha Kitt as Cat Woman, certainly as watch worthy as Uhuru. Batman w/Adam West was the truest comic book adaptation. I loved the cameos from the building windows. This was all at the same time as Laugh In. Life was a lot funnier then

  10. 10.

    geg6

    @Elizabelle:

    I recommend TOS simply for being so unique and groundbreaking.  You’ll laugh at the special effects though.  Then watch Next Generation for the best the series has to show and for the best Captain, Jean-Luc Picard.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize:  Eartha Kitt was unforgettable.  Wasn’t Julie Newmar in there too?

    And we caught the tail end of The Flintstones in first release.  That show ended in 1966.  They were on in the early evenings.  (We were watching from Hawaii; no idea if they aired the same time as the mainland or what …)

  13. 13.

    Dangerman

    Rock on, Vernon. I’ve probably said it previously, but please pardon the repetition if so; best rock concert I’ve ever seen was Living Colour. Probably because it was a small club and I was a few feet from the band.

  17. 17.

    guachi

    I’m sure Alex Pareene randomly chose Mannix but he couldn’t have made a worse choice. As I mentioned a few days ago Gail Fisher was the first Black female to ever win an Emmy award for starring in… Mannix.

  21. 21.

    HumboldtBlue

    Bill Russell:

    “I was born with a full citizenship… My citizenship is my birthright. That’s the way I’ve always conducted myself — I’m a citizen and I demand everything that goes along with being a citizen.”

  22. 22.

    PAM Dirac

    I did watch the “Woman in Motion” documentary recommended yesterday. It was exceptionally good and showed that Star Trek was just a small part of what Nichelle Nichols should be remembered for. She gets a lot of credit for successfully getting women and minorities into the space program. She had been pretty vocal about how NASA didn’t seem to be very serious about making space for all of us and she ended up with a meeting with the NASA administrator. When the administrator suggested that she be the face of the program she agreed as long as she ran the program. She had already started a production company that was developing what would now be called STEM education and recruitment. She also wanted to make clear that if she was successful and NASA didn’t follow though and get these people in to the astronaut corp, she would become “their worst nightmare”.  She was quite amazing in so many ways.

  23. 23.

    JML

    Bill Russell was remarkable. An amazing leader. People talk about him as being the ultimate winner, someone who was almost pathological about it, an extreme competitor. And that’s true. But he’s also proof that you don’t have to be a shitty teammate and a complete asshole to also be a huge winner and driven competitor. Russell’s teammates revered him. He didn’t need to dominate or demean them to be great. He was a great teammate in addition to every other superlative you could throw at him.

    Total legend. (who also had a fantastic laugh)

  24. 24.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: Akshully!

    STOS = “Star Trek Original Series” while if you are in a Star Trek discussion, TOS = “The Original Series.”

    STNG = “Star Trek Next Generation.”

  25. 25.

    Brit in Chicago

    @SiubhanDuinne: My opinion of Barkley just went up a notch when I read that story. I think he knew who was the better player, and the bigger man (and I don’t mean in inches or pounds).

  26. 26.

    Immanentize

    @Dangerman: i loved Living Colour live. I have a Vernon Reid guitar pick he flung at me in Boston. The pick is purple and has printed on it: “Vernon Reid.” Just in case I forgot?

  28. 28.

    Booger

    @geg6: There is a ‘remastered’ DVD set available where the special effects are nicely updated. The “Doomsday Machine” episode holds up well and is greatly improved with the new effects; it was also one of the only episodes to have a unique score with motifs for the various parts.

  31. 31.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Brit in Chicago: ​ 

    I’ve been watching Charles Barkley since he was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers. He’s actually a pretty good guy, open, honest, very funny, and as with this Russell interaction, willing to listen and learn.

    A few weeks ago, he spoke plainly and sincerely to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

    “If you are gay or transgender, I love you. And if anybody gives you shit, you tell ’em Charles says ‘fuck you!’”

    You’re not Brit from Lost In The Pond are ya? Grimsby Town’s most famous Lawrence.

  33. 33.

    Mike in NC

    I think the general rule is that a person has to have been deceased for ten years before they get a postage stamp. Maybe they will waive that for a giant like Bill Russell.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    Somewhere, very recently, I saw that Bill Russell’s very last tweet was a 100th birthday greeting to Mrs. Robinson. BTW, there’s another hella strong and distinguished woman.

  37. 37.

    HumboldtBlue

    Breaking: The Senate has passed the PACT Act, the bill to expand benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits, 86-11.

    The no votes were Crapo, Lankford, Lee, Lummis, Paul, Risch, Romney, Shelby, Tillis, Toomey, Tuberville.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Immanentize:

    And at pretty much the same time, I think (maybe a hair earlier), Diana Rigg was slinking around our TVs as Emma Peel.

    Also, leave us not forget Barbara Feldon.

  40. 40.

    HinTN

    @NotMax: Great googly moogly! Now you make me think that when I took up smoking at 16, so I could be ready to smoke pot in that nebulous future when I might have the opportunity, I smoked Winstons because I watched the Flintstones. GAH

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    @Booger

    In 2004 William Windom reprised his Commodore Matt Decker role in one of the better guest star appearances for nostalgia buffs among fan-produced original episodes based on TOS.

  50. 50.

    Dangerman

    @Gin & Tonic: I read someplace that Wilt would have been a hell of a decathlete. Read the same about Russell yesterday. I’m too young to remember BR as a player but their games must have been something.

  53. 53.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Dangerman: Living Colour was one of my first concerts and their debut album Vivid is pretty much the reason I picked up guitar and drums.  Incredible band.  I saw their Vivid anniversary tour a few years ago and they still are absolutely killing it.  Plus songs like Pride, Funny Vibe and Which Way to America couldn’t be more timely as they were 30 years ago.  I also got to meet them (at a record signing for Stain) and they are semi-regular guests on TheBlackGuyWhoTips podcast.  Vernon and Corey are both super smart and hilarious!

  56. 56.

    Raoul Paste

    @Dangerman:

    I can easily see how Living Colour would be your best memory.  Back in the day I saw a little-known band called the Eagles open for Yes, and yet  i’d have to say that Santana, whom we saw 10 years ago, was the best live show.  Extremely tight, total pros.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    This was wonderful.  ESPN: Celebrating Rachel: Jackie Robinson’s widow and her impact beyond the game

    Interview with their youngest son, David. Talks about his parents and their times; how he was the only black child at a private school with 400 plus students. He now lives in Tanzania and runs a coffee cooperative.

    Background on Rachel Robinson in ESPN’s intro: she was a civil rights activist, and in her own right, a pioneer in the medical field. In 1961, Rachel graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing. She was later the director of nursing for the Connecticut Mental Health Center and an assistant professor of nursing at Yale University.

    When I was 6 or 7 years old, my mother would make up bedtime stories, and in them, I was a knight at King Arthur’s Round Table. It was always about the drama of facing extreme odds for a righteous cause. The knights would rally around the cause of justice and raise their swords in a united fashion to see that justice was done.

    I think the imaginary dynamic she created in bedtime stories was all part of her wanting to give her children a sense of strength. America in that period was a fairly hostile environment; because of discriminatory practices in the 1950s, it took my mother nearly a year of searching across Long Island to Connecticut to find a home for our family.

    She would wait for The New York Times every Sunday and pore over real estate listings only to be told our family wasn’t the “right fit” for a certain neighborhood, or that the house was no longer on the market. When the Bridgeport Herald published an interview with my mother as part of a series on housing discrimination, residents in Stamford, Connecticut, invited our family to meet with real estate brokers. That’s how we moved to Stamford in 1954. By then, my father, Jackie Robinson, was in his eighth year of playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and two seasons away from retiring. Jackie Jr. was 7 years old, Sharon 4. I was 2 years old.

    … Social activism and justice, and the role you played in both, that was the era. It was the bread and butter; it was the air we breathed. Not a day went by without a reflection or discussion of social issues. At home, our parents tried to keep a balanced picture at the dining room table. They wanted to be uplifting. I remember they would talk about the challenges the Freedom Riders faced going down by the busload to challenge segregation in the South. In the summer of 1963, my parents organized and hosted the first annual “Afternoon of Jazz” at our house in Stamford to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dizzy Gillespie was there. So was Duke Ellington. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to our home. Your involvement in social development determined who you were and the significance you had in that time period. That was how we lived and who we were.

    Sometimes the emotions ranged from anger to frustration to sadness. In the worst hours, when the KKK bombed 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963, and killed four little girls, there’s nothing you can say.

    … At that time, when my father was playing baseball, no one was getting excessively rich and comfortable on baseball salaries. My father was not making millions of dollars. That was not the measure of time. After his playing career, in 1957, my father became vice president of personnel at Chock full o’ Nuts — the first Black vice president of a major American corporation. It’s difficult to conceive how different my life would be without the family and parents that I grew up with. My grandmother on my father’s side was a sharecropper in Georgia; her own mother was born a slave. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a soldier in World War I stationed in France and was threatened to be court-martialed by the army for fraternizing with white French citizens. His life was substantially shortened after being gassed in the war. But he instilled in my mother a sense of the world and a sense of self that she wanted to pass on to her children.

    My mother wanted to make sure her children had a solid foundation of inner strength, whether that was discovered through imaginary bedtime stories or through travel.

  62. 62.

    Kevin

    I hope they both felt some of the love that is outpouring in death while they were alive. Ill admit I didn’t know much about either until now but clearly they both had huge a impact.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    @Ben Cisco:   Thank you.  Will have to get with the programs.

    @Kevin:   It’s striking what a different world they encountered, and succeeded in. And sought to make progress for others, and inspire people to dream.

    And then we see, from the next post’s topic, now worse Americans want to drag us backwards.  We cannot let that happen.

  64. 64.

    Geoduck

    Shatner is a jerk, but I will say that on those occasions when he makes an effort, he is a pretty good actor. Sadly, he himself has admitted that he half-assed it a lot during the TOS era.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @Elizabelle: Alan Napier played Alfred. I recently caught a younger Alan Napier performance, playing the role of a country doctor in the great spooky story The Uninvited from 1944. I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. Then I looked up the cast list on IMdB and saw a head shot taken when he was older and said, immediately, “Oh! Alfred!”

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