The Top 10 NBA Players Ever - #3

This is another installment in my list of the top 10 NBA players of all time. It is admittedly a subjective list. Are individual statistics more important than the number of championships a player led his team to? These types of lists will always be contentious. However, it should be known that this list was compiled with a tremendous amount of thought.

#3 Bill Russell
Bill Russell played in the NBA for 13 seasons. He won 11 NBA championships. Defensively, he was what Wilt Chamberlain was on offense. His presence out on the court influenced every single shot taken by the opponent. For a young bigman, facing Bill Russell was like losing a loved one; it caused a temporary melancholy. The mentally strong were able to go on to good careers. Those that weren't faded into oblivion.

Blocks were not recorded while Russell played, otherwise there would be some way to enumerate his impact in preventing the other team from scoring. In an era when every shot from the field counted for two points, the Celtics' opponents tended to shoot a higher percentage of outside shots. Russell once bragged that he didn't have to block every shot. After he blocked a few, you'd be looking for him every time you drove to the basket.

Russell made a conscious effort to ensure the Celtics obtained the ball after he swatted a shot. If you faced Russell's Celtics, a blocked shot wasn't merely a missed field goal, it was a turnover. Despite being a slightly undersized center at 6'9" 215 lbs., he was a rebounding machine. He led the league in total rebounds 4 times. Bill averaged 22.5 per game for his career, the second highest average in NBA history.

Russell was universally respected, mostly because his teams nearly always won. Offensively, Russell averaged a career mark of 15.1 ppg and never averaged even 19 a game in any one season (though he did average over 20 ppg in the 1962 and 1963 playoffs). But he was voted MVP five times. He was named to either the All-NBA 1st or 2nd team every year of his career except for his rookie campaign. He was named to the inaugural All-NBA Defensive team for the 1968-9 campaign, which was his final season.

Wilt Chamberlain usually produced the better numbers than Russell in their head-to-head encounters, but Russell's team almost always won the series. That was largely due to Russell's role among the Celtics' superior talent. He was the heart and the brains out on the floor. He was promoted to player-coach for the final three seasons of his career, which included two championships. In so doing, Russell was the first black head coach of any major American sports team.

Russell was the foundation of the Celtics' success. Though his statistics are rather paltry compared to other players who will grace this list (except for his rebound numbers), Russell is the ultimate winner. He was the leader of the most dominant dynasty in NBA history. He is still the league's best defender of all time.