Bill Russell grew up in rural Louisiana, surrounded by a tremendous amount of racism, to eventually become a leading face in the black power movement, and the greatest winner of all time in team sports history.

He was the first black coach in the NBA and in the four major professional sports. He was a tremendous rebounder and accomplished many things on the defensive end that people didn’t focus on back then. They weren’t even keeping blocks as an official stat and people have gone back and tried to look through video to record and keep notes of how many he got and it would’ve been double, maybe even triple what players do today. Ultimately, he was pioneering both on the court and off.