Bill Russell Used To Race Across The Country In His Lamborghini 400GT Against Wilt Chamberlain And His Maserati Ghibli: “Don’t Ask Who Won, You Know The Answer.”

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain are arguably the 2 faces that made the NBA a household name in the United States. There have been many players to reach the top of the NBA pyramid prior to them, but nobody commanded the power that those 2 did until the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird rivalry that emerged in the ’80s.

Russell and Chamberlain would often meet on the NBA court, especially during the NBA Finals. Wilt took his fair share of losses to Bill en route to the Celtics’ legend, winning 11 rings as a player. While Wilt would get to the mountaintop, eventually, Russell was winning at a pace nobody in the NBA has even come close to recreating.

Despite everything that happened on the court, Wilt and Bill would spend time with each other alone when they weren’t playing. One of the things they enjoyed doing was racing their cars, as Russell had revealed in 2020. Bill would race in a Lamborghini 400 GT which he’d barely fit in, and Wilt would race in his Maserati Ghibli. Russell ensured that everybody knew that he was the winner in the races with a subtle dig later in the thread.

.@Lamborghini 400GT. If the seat was all the way back I could not touch the pedals. I used to race Wilt in his @Maserati_HQ Ghibli. Don’t ask who won, you know the answer https://t.co/3nCVQfUFeE

— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) July 7, 2020

The Rivalry Between Bill Russell And Wilt Chamberlain

Wilt and Bill would end up meeting on the NBA court 142 times in 10 years, in which Russell’s Celtics won over Wilt 88 times. In those efforts, Chamberlain has had 7 50+ point games against the Celtics that Russell would play on, showing that he really had to do some heroic things to try and get a win over that era of Boston Celtics basketball.

This being the first genuine rivalry of the NBA era helped the league massively as interest spiked in basketball. Chamberlain first was a part of the Philadelphia Warriors, a rival team of the Celtics. Russell and Wilt would then establish the iconic Lakers-Celtics rivalry when Wilt played with the purple and gold team.