The worst chapter of Bill Russell’s otherwise charmed basketball life played out in Sacramento.
His career was undone by a Kings roster thin on talent and drive, of picking first in a luckless 1989 draft and punctuated by abject tragedy. The sport’s most accomplished player was a forced fit in Sacramento. He was hired as coach before the 1987-88 season after 10 years away from the bench, signed to a seven-year deal with plans to take over as general manager and then become part owner. Russell was a smart man. He liked the sound of this business proposal, of being wanted, of being in a city that backed its only major sports team. Russell’s Bay Area roots, and his father, were just over an hour away.
But the 11-time NBA champion with the Boston Celtics lasted 58 games as Kings coach — and half the next season in the front office — before the club pulled the plug and spent years eating his contract. It’s the most disappointing big-name miss in franchise history, a curious tale for a club mired in them.
Russell’s darkest day was Aug. 14, 1988, which marked the shattering end of a promising life.
As vice president of basketball operations, no longer the coach, Russell was in his cramped Arco Arena office, talking to an old friend. Longtime college coach Bill Berry and his wife Clarice were on hand to talk about Berry joining the Kings as a scout. Berry’s son, Ricky Berry, was the Kings’ first-round pick in 1988, and the 24-year-old dazzled over the final six weeks of his second season as a 6-foot-8 long-range shooting specialist. Then the call came from Jan Hoganson of the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department.
“I’ll never forget the date, 10 in the morning, and Jan called, telling me that Ricky had killed himself, shot himself,” recalled Greg Van Dusen, then VP of Arco Arena and a Kings front-office worker. “We still don’t know why. I had to go tell Russ. He was just down the hall. I motioned for him. First, he waved me off. I finally got him out and told him what happened. Bill grabbed me by my sports coat and lifted me, face to face, and said, ‘You’d’ better not be f-ing with me!’ I started crying. ‘I’m not.’”
Van Dusen paused, then added, “Bill had to tell Ricky’s parents. He told me, ‘This is the saddest thing that’s ever happened to me.’ He was devastated. We were all devastated. This hit him deeply. Russ was a very caring person. He took everything personally. People didn’t understand that about him because he could be gruff. I know Russ was never the same.”
Russell’s story not complete without Kings mention
Russell’s life story is rich with intrigue. He was a man who stood taller than just his sport in standing up to social injustice, and there was never a greater champion with a more grand resume. All of this has been discussed nationally this week after Russell died Sunday at 88. But Russell’s basketball story is not complete without his Kings tour, though it is often overlooked or ignored in recaps of his career. His Seattle SuperSonics coaching run in the 1970s is widely chronicled, but not always his Kings time, and Russell declined to talk about his Sacramento time over the decades.
The Kings were in their second season in Sacramento when they courted Russell in 1987. The first Kings team made the playoffs before a swift decline, leading to the firing of coach Phil Johnson. Jerry Reynolds, ever the good soldier, took over as coach on an interim basis. Reynolds assisted Russell and later replaced Russell as interim coach and became the longest tenured Kings employee in a business of change.
Russell was brought aboard for a jolt of credibility. He had spoken to longtime friend Joe Axelson, then the Kings general manager, about an NBA front-office gig on the East Coast. The topic turned to the Kings’ opening. Then Kings general managing partner Gregg Lukenbill, the man paramount for relocating the Kings from Kansas City, was smitten with the Hall of Famer. Axelson wasn’t so sure but was sold enough to endorse the deal.
As one-time Bee Kings reporter R.E. Graswich said this week, Russell was at a life crossroads. Russell, Graswich said, was, “Down on his luck, running out of money and irrelevant in a changing NBA. But timing is everything. He conned Joe Axelson and Lukenbill into recycling him. He quickly realized the job was a massive mountain to climb, a task that would take a ton of effort and probably never pay off, so he checked out.”
The initial excitement in Sacramento was palpable. Bill Russell to the Kings? Can it be? What went wrong? How did a man defined by success fail so spectacularly here?
Simple. He didn’t see any old Boston Celtic magic in any of his Kings players. He had a roster of marginal talent, so he grew bored and became detached. He grew alienated with players and staff. He declined to do public functions with the Kings. He didn’t give media interviews or engage with fans. He didn’t see anything of him — fierce and determined — in his big men, Joe Kleine and Jawan Oldham.
‘None of them has ever won anything!’
Russell won his first game on Nov. 6, 1987, rolling Golden State 134-106. He went 16-41 from there. Along the way, Russell would often sip coffee and read the morning paper in the Arco seats while assistant coaches Jerry Reynolds and Willis Reed ran practices. Russell once dozed off in practice. When players snickered, he woke up, lectured them for being so boring that he had to doze, and then threw them out of the gym.
Though players revered Russell the player and the player-coach from his Celtics days, they soon had much in common with their boss. They lost interest. In his first Kings news conference, Russell said, “What I know is winning. I know what it takes and how to do it. Winning can be taught and I know about winning. If you want a team that will contend for an NBA championship, I’m your guy.”
Within months, he was not that guy. Russell instructed his first draft pick, guard Kenny Smith, to sit with him any time he could, to rub elbows with a champion as compared to the alternative. Smith said this week he is indebted for Russell’s mentorship on life lessons.
“I sat next to him for six months — every plane trip, bus ride, pregame meal,” Smith said Sunday on NBATV. “He said, ‘Look at all of these guys. None of them have every won anything!’ He’s screaming this on the bus.”
While speaking to the Kings after a loss in Dallas in Russell’s lone season as Kings coach, dropping their record to 4-13, Oldham stood up, walked to the shower and turned it on full blast, loud enough to drown out the coach. Some players laughed. Russell boiled. Russell was fired as coach in March 1988, nine months after landing the gig. He was booted upstairs.
Admitted Axelson in 1991, well into retirement, to Dan McGrath of The Bee, “I’ll take the blame for Russ. I was warned that he wouldn’t work hard enough, and that’s exactly why he failed.”
Russell would only say that the losses were like repeated kicks to the stomach. He declined to take any responsibility for the Kings’ failures.
Russell’s last chance: Nervous Pervis
Russell had one last chance to make a mark on the Kings. As vice president, Russell and the Kings held the top pick in the 1989 draft. Just their luck, it was a bad lot. Russell went with the 6-foot-9 Pervis Ellison of Louisville.
That Russell did not bring Ellison to Sacramento for a predraft workout or a sit-down discussion to get to know each other puzzled others in the franchise. Uninspired and injury prone, Ellison was a wash and was out of Sacramento after playing in just 34 games. Russell was fired Dec. 19, 1989. He cleaned out his Kings office that night and remained mostly in seclusion for weeks in his Rancho Murrieta home, departing only for provisions and to golf.
“When we hired Russ, it was fabulous, absolutely amazing,” Van Dusen said. “Everyone was excited. But I think Axelson did everything he could to undermine Russ. We had all these big offices in Arco, 16 by 20 feet, and where did Axelson put him? In a hole in the wall down the hall, an 8 by 10. It was so insulting. The Pervis draft was all Russ. He thought Ellison was another Bill Russell: A tall, thin lefty who could block shots, but Pervis didn’t have the heart.”
Russell made one more visit to Arco Arena, years later, but he did not want to rehash old stories. When old-timers told Russell that they were proudly employed by the Kings, he would offer, “I’m so sorry,” with his trademark cackle laugh.
“We called Russ the ultimate game-changer for what he did in Boston and for basketball, but it never happened here,” Van Dusen said. “What a shame.”
