The NBA and the Players Association announced today that Bill Russell’s number 6 would be retired league-wide in his honor. It’s a wonderful honor that truly captures the magnitude of Russell’s impact on the league. There is no greater honor for a player than to have meant so much to an organization that no other player can live up to that legacy. To have that apply to an entire league is truly special.
And it came too late.
I know that on the surface, this seems like a proper posthumous honor for a lost legend. Honors for lost legends are nothing new, and things like this are, truly, fantastic commemorations of a player’s greatness.
But Russell is gone, and he was just as deserving of this honor two weeks or two months ago. I know we walk a fine line between honoring a living basketball god and forcing him to listen to his own obituary, but some honors are big enough that a person deserves to bask in the glow of them.
And we know Russell was not one to seek out accolades. He was never a ‘look at me’ kind of guy. He was given the honor of handing out a Finals MVP award that was named after him in 2009. There's no doubt he would have won a few of them himself had the award been handed out before 1969 (Jerry West won the first one, even though Russell led the Celtics as player-coach to the championship in his final season).
But this? This is as big an honor as there is. I’d argue that it’s as big, or bigger, than a Hall of Fame induction. There have been more than 400 people inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. Russell is the only player to have his number retired league-wide.
It’s too late now, which is a shame, because I believe this is something he should have been able to enjoy.
Now, we have to move forward and use this opportunity to truly honor his legacy.
To start, I think LeBron James would gain a LOT of respect from Celtics fans if he were to give up his number 6 this season. Any player already wearing the number can keep it, but a gesture like that from LeBron would be meaningful.
On top of that, I think the entire Celtics team should be allowed to wear the number 6 for opening night in honor of Russell. The jerseys can have each player’s real number on the back, and then after the game each jersey can be signed and auctioned off to benefit Boston mentorship programs.
LeBron could do the same with his final number 6 jersey, likely raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for kids in Russell’s memory.
The league can do something similar in every city, holding auctions to benefit kids in Russell’s name, truly carrying on his legacy in an impactful way.
Maybe if the league had proposed this gesture when Russell was alive, he would have put some kind of similar parameters on it, much like he did with his statue. Now that we have to carry on his legacy, we have to push for things he might have pushed for himself.
The league is honoring Russell in a very amazing way. But it needs to use this moment to not just honor him, but to honor everything he stood for.