{"id":621856,"date":"2026-02-24T12:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T12:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/621856\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T12:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T12:42:16","slug":"was-hall-of-fame-boston-celtics-big-man-bill-russell-the-greatest-of-all-nba-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/621856\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics big man Bill Russell the greatest of all NBA champions?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics big man Bill Russell the greatest of all NBA champions? With a total of 11 NBA titles to his name (all won with the Celtics in the late 1950s and 1960s), the Louisiana native has as good a claim as anyone does, even against the likes of <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/chicago-bulls\/4\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Chicago Bulls;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Chicago Bulls<\/a> icon Michael Jordan (just six titles) and LeBron James (a mere four titles).<\/p>\n<p>Before that, Russell had won a pair of NCAA titles with future Celtics teammate KC Jones at the University of San Francisco for good measure, and also served as a player coach for several of his latter titles won with Boston. Did we mention that Russell also won a gold medal at the Olympics as well? There is no greater winner in the history of the NBA (and arguably sport).<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The folks behind the &#8220;Hoops Eternal&#8221; YouTube channel put together a clip debating whether Russell was the greatest NBA champion. Check it out below!<\/p>\n<p>Listen to &#8220;Havlicek Stole the Pod&#8221; on:<\/p>\n<p>Spotify: <a href=\"https:\/\/tiny.ee\/CdKp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:https:\/\/tiny.ee\/CdKp;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">https:\/\/tiny.ee\/CdKp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>iTunes: <a href=\"https:\/\/tiny.ee\/RK47\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:https:\/\/tiny.ee\/RK47;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">https:\/\/tiny.ee\/RK47<\/a><\/p>\n<p>YouTube:<a href=\"https:\/\/tiny.ee\/cOW3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:https:\/\/tiny.ee\/cOW3;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> https:\/\/tiny.ee\/cOW3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: <a href=\"https:\/\/celticswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/celtics\/2026\/02\/24\/was-hall-of-fame-celtics-big-bill-russell-the-greatest-of-nba-champions\/87663947007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Was Hall of Fame Celtics big Bill Russell the greatest of NBA champions?;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Was Hall of Fame Celtics big Bill Russell the greatest of NBA champions?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics big man Bill Russell the greatest of all NBA champions? With a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,4844,45,75,3798,46,329,5245,185,935,6,81876],"class_list":{"0":"post-621856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bill-russell","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-celtics","12":"tag-bostonceltics","13":"tag-celtics","14":"tag-chicago-bulls","15":"tag-hall-of-fame","16":"tag-lebron-james","17":"tag-michael-jordan","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-ncaa-titles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}