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The best basketball player of all time was probably Bill Russell. Great basketball players make their teammates better and Russell was the defensive glue on teams that won 11 championships in 13 years. It's hard to make your teammates any better than that. It's true he had plenty of help but basketball is a team game. The Celtics bested Wilt Chamberlain's teams in the playoffs every time they met but once and Chamberlain was by far the most dominant offensive player in basketball history. Teams, not individuals win basketball championships. Every now and then exceptions occur (as with Dwayne Wade vs. San Antonio in 2006) but it's rare to see a single individual overcoming a team effort. The closest current NBA player to Bill Russell is Ben Wallace and it will be interesting to see just how far a slightly better than .500 Chicago team becomes with the addition of the interior defense of Wallace.

Bill Russell was not a tremendously gifted offensive player(though light years ahead of Ben Wallace), but his shot blocking and rebounding keyed all those Celtic championships. His popularity suffers because defense isn't glamorous and there were no shot blocking stats kept during his career. Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan were probably all more fun to watch and some of the greatest players of all time but no one, not even Jordan has all the championship rings that Bill Russell does.

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