You don’t want to get lost in the statistics, but you do need to know that William Felton Russell won 11 N.B.A. championships with the Boston Celtics in 13 seasons (1957, 1959–66, 1968, 1969) and that as a player-coach from 1966 to 1969, he won N.B.A. titles in 1968 and 1969. Those are astonishing stats, important. But our sports are also about character.
“Sportsmanship” can be a naïve word, especially in the shadow of the failure and shame of the N.F.L.’s inept handling of Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson’s numerous sexual-misconduct allegations and Trump’s infestation of golf. But if we are who we say we are as a people, if we believe in courage and integrity and fair play, then we define ourselves in our sports. New ways of thinking about race, about media, about celebrity have always played out on our fields and courts. That is the lesson of Bill Russell, who died Sunday at 88.
