Depending on which year or decade you started watching basketball, that timing more than likely plays a big role in what player you consider to be the greatest of all time, or the GOAT. And right now, the biggest debate always seems to land on LeBron versus Jordan.
But Kevin Merida’s opinion piece in The Washington Post titled, “LeBron or Jordan for Basketball GOAT? We’re forgetting someone,” makes a compelling argument for Bill Russell and the belief that greatness goes beyond stats and championships.
Because Bill Russell wasn’t just an 11-time champion and the backbone of the Celtics dynasty, he was an exceptional human being who faced hate and racism with grace, making him a legend on and off the court.
Kevin Merida is a contributing essayist for the Washington Post Opinion Section, and he joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about redefining greatness. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: I love this piece because — and as you mention — it seems like there’s no other sport that dwells on the all-time GOAT quite as much as basketball. It certainly seems like that binary, the Michael Jordan-LeBron James binary, is a basketball thing. Why do you think that is?
Kevin Merida: Well, part of it is just the internet age. We grow a debate on the internet and it’s lively out there with NBA fans. Very passionate people will fight you on social media over that question, but again, you know the debate needs widening. It can’t just be the province of the passionate mob on the Internet.
The Los Angeles Times
Rath: Tell us about the degree of difficulty metric that you want to introduce into this.
Merida: Yes, I think that we sometimes forget our pioneers and the people who came before us, that we lose sight of them. They just kind of disappear. Bill Russell played at a time and came to Boston in 1956 as the only Black player. He won championships when he got there. Celtics did not win before he came. He was a great defensive specialist. So, skill-wise, he was a great basketball player, but to do that under a kind of pressure, that is uncommon. Under death threats and people calling him the N-word, coon, baboon and very mean things, not wanting to sell him a home in certain neighborhoods... He was outspoken even amidst that.
There’s a kind of greatness that can be measured in bravery and perseverance, and excellence under pressure. I think Bill Russell is very high on the list of those who have achieved, in any sport, and at a time when there weren’t many Black athletes doing this ... there weren’t any Black superstars. He’s up there in the all-time category of just performance under a kind of stress that is uncommon now.
Rath: Talking about the way that he was treated. It’s the slurs and epithets that weren’t just at away games. It’s nauseating how horribly he was treated right here in Boston when he was bringing the team to win after win. There also seems to be something to say about him that he didn’t leave Boston. He stayed here.
Merida: Yeah, he was one of the first to speak out also about how African Americans were treated in Boston. That’s a form of bravery to speak up even when things are happening to you. His home was broken into, you know, they defecated in his bed, slurs on the walls... So, this was the kind of treatment that he faced and he always said that he was playing for the Celtics and not for Boston.
That was a very important. The camaraderie they had as a team and winning championships was one thing, but he was not playing for the city. It was a very tough relationship he had with the city, but, he stayed there and he had a restaurant, Slade’s, in the Black community.
He was an advocate for civil rights and for other Black athletes. It took a while for that relationship to thaw. Boston eventually honored him and put up a statue in City Hall Plaza for Bill Russell in 2013, but it was a long time of just a very difficult relationship. And yet, here’s a guy who won 11 championships. That’s its own record. So, he’s really someone that should be back in the conversation.
And I don’t think it’s just him, but I think he’s a representation. I think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and others could be in the conversations about who the greatest athlete is. We have kind of narrowed it enough to just look at statistics and awards, and I think we should widen it into how you get it done. It may not be the GOAT, as we’ve come to call the greatest of all time. It may be, as a friend of mine recently said, that Bill Russell’s the most important player that played the game.
Rath: Right, and talking about the city of Boston and the changes over time as well, it just hits me even more how Michael Jordan might have made Chicago a happier city, but Bill Russell made Boston a better city. He made us better.
Merida: That’s a very good point, Arun. I think anytime you stay at a place, you fight the city’s worst impulses and you become a model for courage, then you have done something to help move the city forward. Bill Russell’s the Hall of Famer of Boston beyond being simply a Hall of Famer of basketball. He is a very important figure in the life of the city.
Rath: I’m curious about your thoughts about applying this metric more specifically to modern players. I’m thinking about how, even though I’m very much a child of the 80s, if I had to pick between LeBron and Michael Jordan, I would pick LeBron. And a bit of that, honestly, is applying your metric, that I kind of feel like LeBron maybe stands for something.
Merida: Well, look, I think we could really get into that debate on Michael Jordan. Think about this. He’s a dark skin African-American, had a bald head and the earring. He wore baggy shorts and he had the stylish suits. He was one of the earliest Black athletes as a corporate pitchman for many companies and brands. We had not seen an athlete with so many commercials and representing so many brands.
I think he also set the model, particularly for Black athletes, of what you could accomplish off the court. Now, he has a very big brand with Nike. He was Nike’s biggest athlete at the time before they were really in the game of branding with athletes. So, he did a lot to set a model for what you can accomplish as a Black athlete.
So, I think he sometimes gets underrated for that because we often look at his politics and they remember quotes like, “Republicans buy shoes too.” He didn’t get involved in certain races, but I think some of that has been magnified beyond what it should be. I think he has made a big contribution off the court in the same way that he was just great on the court.
Rath: That’s interesting. Like you said, this can be a very interesting discussion. But before we let you go, I’m curious what kind of reaction have you had to your column?
Merida: There have been a lot of great comments and, of course, people debating and saying, “Hey, don’t forget about this person or that person.” There’s a lot people that were just saying, “Look, there’s no one like Jordan. There’s no one like LeBron.” So, it continues the debate. But I do think that it caused a lot of people to stop, pause, and just assess how we come to our labeling of greatness. How do we do that? I do think it ought to be broadened. There are a lot of people who just changed the game and had such an influence on it. They deserve consideration on the Mount Rushmore of basketball as well.
