Sports Illustrated - USA (2020-12)

GO UP FOR GLORY By Bill Russell

In 1968, Sports Illustr ated

named Bill Russell its Sportsperson

of the Year after a season in which

he won his 10th NBA championship

as a player and his first as a coach,

the first title won by a Black coach

in the league’s history. Two years

earlier the Celtics’ center wrote a

book, Go Up for Glory, which had

been out of print for 40 years until its mid-November

rerelease with a new foreword from Russell himself.

A half-century after its first publication, Glory

remains one of the best books of its ilk, an enthralling

snapshot of its era that serves as a reminder of not

only how much basketball has changed (back then

the Lakers’ courtside celebrity was Doris Day)—but

also how much the rest of the world hasn’t. Russell

was unf linching in his description of the racism he

encountered growing up in Louisiana and Oakland,

leaving him with the feeling that, as he writes, “You

are a Negro. You are less. It covered every area. A

living, smarting, hurting, smelling, greasy substance

which covered you. A morass to fight from.” The final

three of the book’s 11 chapters are about race, from his

visits to Africa and Mississippi in the wake of the 1963

murder of activist Medgar Evers to his disenchantment

with the civil rights movement. Still, a year after the

1965 Watts riots, Russell found a measure of hope. “It

is not a matter for violence,” he wrote. “It is a matter

for confrontation. It is a matter of asking the question.

And some day, it will work.” —Mark Bechtel

READ

A COUPLE OF BOOKS—ONE A REISSUE OF A CLASSIC, THE OTHER NEW—OFFER

INSIGHT INTO THE LIVES OF TWO LEGENDARY SPORTSPERSONS OF THE YEAR

MASTER WORKS

28 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM

SCORECARD

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