“Bill Russell threw up in the locker room before every game”: Wilt Chamberlain could not fathom just how seriously the Celtics great took basketball

Wilt Chamberlain once revealed in his autobiography that Bill Russell would throw up in the locker room prior to games. 

Two sides of the same coin that each had their own version of success: Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Russell dominated alongside his Boston Celtics throughout the late 50s and the entirety of the 1960s, winning 11 championships in total while Wilt could muster up merely two chips of his own despite his individual dominance. 

For the longest time, Bill’s play was the antithesis to Wilt’s play. The Boston legend was unselfish, pushed the fast-break, and committed himself on defense so as to erase any defensive lapses from his perimeter guys. Wilt Chamberlain on the other hand, wanted to fill the stat-sheet, mainly with points and rebounds. 

Once Wilt realized that keeping up team morale and passing to teammates for open buckets would help win titles, he committed to defense like Russell. However, even in times of unselfishness, he let his own personality get in the way. 

Bill Libby stated in his 1977 biography of Wilt that he would simply not pass the ball to teammates who weren’t making shots so as to not squander his chances at an assist title.

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Wilt Chamberlain on Bill Russell and how seriously he took the game. 

It was extremely clear that Wilt Chamberlain was not motivated by mere winning in the NBA and he even admitted this in a passage in his autobiography ‘Wilt’. In this passage he would also reveal just how seriously his Celtics counterpart took the game of basketball. 

“To Bill, every game-every championship game-was a challenge, a test to his manhood. He took the game so seriously that he threw up in the locker room before almost every game. But I tend to look at basketball as a game, not a life or death struggle.” 

At the end of the day, competitiveness is derived from the willingness to sacrifice for the sake of, well, winning. In the simplest terms that separate both Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, the latter was willing to sacrifice everything to win it all while Wilt had his reservations.

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