You have to remember that coaching wasn't sophisticated back then - you didn't have the camps, clinics and all the technical advances that are available today - so from that standpoint, playing with a cast on my arm was a fortunate event in my life.

Every jock gets up and tells the world how lucky he is. But I feel that I may be the luckiest one of all in terms of timing and being at the right place at the right moment-even though, for the last 30 years, I was told I was born 20 years too soon, for obvious reasons.

That seemed to be the case with most of the teams based in the smaller towns - the fans were more rabid, and they wanted to literally kill the opposition.

Back then every small town had a gym, and if itseated more than 2,000 then we'd be interested in playing in it.

French was my first language.

Kerner decided to trade my rights to the Chicago Stags, which sounded better to me than Tri-Cities, but the Stags folded up almost immediately.

Russell joined the team in December, 1956, following the Olympics.