Russell, Panel Pay Tribute To King

During Sunday's game, a scoreboard video showed a compilation of Suns players delivering portions of Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington in honor of Monday's King holiday.

Some Suns fans got another powerful message before the game, when the organization held a King symposium featuring Bill Russell, one of the NBA's legends and civil rights leaders as its first Black coach - or as he put it, "I was the first Black coach I played for."

Russell spoke with King the day before the march. King wanted him to come on stage, but Russell declined in deference to those who worked with King for years.

Six years after the speech, Russell carried out one of several actions in his life that carried on King's legacy.

Russell's Boston Celtics were in Lexington, Ky., when he went to eat and was told the team hotel restaurant did not serve Blacks. Russell went to his room and booked a flight home, and a few teammates followed.

Last year, the president of Prairie View A&M University said he was a junior high student in Lexington at the time.

"You have no idea what impact you had on my life," he told Russell. "That was the first time the community realized everybody wasn't going to let you treat them how you want. It changed the whole atmosphere."

Sunday's panel also included Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson, Suns President Rick Welts, former Suns players Truck Robinson and Mark West, Phoenix's director of player programs.

Robinson, who came to Phoenix in 1979, said Black players often noted how the Suns' 1970s rosters were racially balanced, saying, "There is something going on here."

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source : azcentral.com