Ultimately, you play to win THE GAME – ideally an everything-on-the-line Seventh Game.
And no one came out a winner more consistently in such games than the great Bill Russell … ten for ten.
Check out the Hall of Famer’s AVERAGE performance for those 10 games (via basketball-reference.com): in 48.6 minutes of PT, he’d score 18.6 points, grab 29.3 rebounds and be credited with 3.7 assists.
Russell’s most dominant Game 7 showing occurred in the very first series ever to pit the Celtics with the LOS ANGELES Lakers 58 years ago – and in both a game and series that Coach Auerbach’s boys seemed to be doing their damnedest to lose (and Frank Selvy had a chance to win in the closing seconds of regulation).