John,

Last time I checked, 6 plus 6 is twelve, so Jordan's 6 titles is in fact just over half of Russell's 11.

John,

I respect you and your opinion, but I have to disagree with you.

1) Russell played in a league with far fewer teams than the league that Jordan played in.

2) Jordan's Bulls team had to be built from the bottom up. It didn't take Russell long for him to win.

3) Spike Lee said it best when he said that Jordan was the greatest of all time because he was the complete player. There was nothing he couldn't do (shoot, pass, drive, rebound, play defense). Therefore, 5 Jordans would beat 5 Russells or 5 Chamberlains.

"Country" King, a friend of mine while we were at TU, is in a much better position to evaluate players. He was an NBA starting point guard for MANY years and played against Bill Russell (whom I know well), Will the Stilt and many other greats. During this time I was a sports writer in Milwaukee....I would like to add the "Big O" to the short list of greatest players and would like to hear what Jim King has to say about Oscar Robertson. No one played defense any better than Oscar, as well as shoot and, most of all, direct a team on an off the floor. TU fans know Oscar well when he played at Cincinnatti U. in the Mo Valley with Tulsa. King and Oscar went head-to-head in those days.

Love these kinds of debates. Since Yogi Berra has more World Series rings than any other player was he the greatest baseball player of all time? Of course not! Any number of John Wooden's players won championships every year of their eligibility and that does not make any of them the greatest college basketball player of all time. The Celtics had great coaching and put together a great supporting cast for Russell who rose to the occasion for every championship game. He was the greatest defensive player of his era (in a day when he was one of few players of his height) and that was his game. He rarely put up great offensive stats. If you take "team" out of the equation there are maybe ten players who any observer of the game could easily say were better all around basketball players than Russell and would leave him flat footed on a serious game of one on one.