MVPs: 5. Finals MVPs: (7). All-NBA 1st Team: 3. 2nd Team: 8. All Star: 12. MVP: 1.
Defensive POY: 0. All-Defense 1st Team: 1.
Rebounds Champ: 5.
Career Averages: 15 PPG/ 22 RPG/ 4 APG/ .440 eFG%/ .561 FT%.
Best Season: 19/ 24/ 4/ .457/ .595 (1961-62).
Postseason Averages: 15 PPG/ 25 RPG/ 5 APG/ .430 eFG%/ .603 FT%.
Best Postseason: 20/ 30/ 5/ .427/ .523 (1961).
Championships: 11 (#1 player 8x, #2 player 3x). Runner-ups: 1 (#1 player).
Why he's below LeBron James: Sure, Russell has LeBron beat in MVPs, Finals appearances and championships, but some of those seasons there were only 8 teams in the league. LeBron has played in the deepest period of NBA history--only one expansion team has been added since his rookie year, and international stars are becoming more and more common. LeBron has also played a lot longer; he's already played 440 more regular season games and 95 more postseason games than Russell did.
Why he's above the rest: How would Russell’s career be viewed if the Finals MVP award had existed his entire career and if he’d won it 7 or more times? He won MVP and the championship in the same season 5 times, and 3 more times the Celtics knocked the regular season MVP out of the playoffs. I think we can assume he would have been Finals MVP for more than half of his 11 championships. How would he be viewed if Defensive Player of the Year existed during his career? I feel like the people who don’t rank Russell this high get overwhelmed by the stats of other players (though Russell led the regular season in rebounding 5 times and the postseason in rebounding 7 times, plus averaged an impressive 4.7 assists per postseason game). But look more closely at the stats of players who faced Russell. The year Wilt scored 50 PPG, he only averaged 33 per game in the finals against Russell. Cutting a dominant player’s production by a third is how you win 11 championships and get called the greatest defensive player of all time.
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