Cazzie Russell Article - January 1966, Dell Sports Magazine
I was browsing at a local sports memorabilia shop yesterday when I ran across an amazing item. In a stack of old magazines I found this...
Obviously I had to buy it... Here is the entire article for you guys to enjoy.
Sorry about the formatting, first time I've started a post on the Board.
I hope you MGoHistorians appreciate the article as much as I did. Interesting tidbit about Oscar Robertson, the buzzer beaters are pretty cool, and my favorite part "Yeah, they were number 1 for 30 seconds"...GOLD!
Enjoy guys!
Was a bit hard to read, but still a great look back at the type of guy he was. I don't know as much as I should about him, but don't see too many all Americans think about turning down the nba these days. Though the pay scale has definitely increased a few thousand percent.
Sorry about the size of the pictures, as I stated, this was my first time posting anything so I was not sure how large the pics would appear. At any rate, glad you enjoyed it.
Never thaught of that as a recruiting violation haha, these days it would be no doubt. I also thought the piece about the Pistons was cool too.
Right, giving away his shoes was probably no big deal. But today if manzeil gave even a high school recruit a tshirt to go to A & M; sports center would explode.
I took a cruise around Italy/Greece/Croatia this spring with the UM Alumni Association. One of the fellow alums I met was Cazzie's backup. He and his wife were great to hang out with.
Since Cazzie rarely left the court, he didn't have a productive career, but I don't think he can complain about the experience!
I didn't find out about his background until the end of the cruise when my wife mentioned that his wife had talked about basketball and Cazzie the first evening. If she had said something earlier, I'm sure I would have some great stories to tell. Sigh...
The formatting is fine and the pages are perfectly legible, at least on this end. Well done indeed! I was hoping it was something like this actually and wondered when this thread would reappear.
I rather liked the story about how Oscar Robertson gave Russell a pair of his shoes - presumably as a way to attract him to Cincinnati - and then "went on a rampage" over that summer and went to Michigan anyway, even saying that he still had the shoes. Very funny in a way.
Thanks for sharing this!
Something like this needs to get shared before it can no longer be found. Glad I could rescue it from the old stack.
Thank you OP for sticking with this project and getting this great content onto the board. Much appreciated!
Am I crazy or did you post this yesterday too?
but failed. I couldn't figure out the pictures until today.
Great stuff
Thank you for sharing
Cazzie was my first Michigan super-hero when i was a kid. my big brother took me to Yost to the games. the place rocked. literally.
i'll check it out.
BLAST from the past! Thanks for posting that, BlastDouble---I especially appreciate the hard work involved in copying and posting each and every page; once I got started, I simply couldn't stop reading.
Cazzie was one special athlete---there's no doubt in my mind that if he were a half-century younger he'd still be a star. And that pure gold quote about the IU fans chanting "we're #1"? --- that not only perfectly captures the attitude of a true champion, it also thrills me to see that the hatred we all have for the IU of Bobby Knight and Tom Crean was also present 50 years ago.
Jerry Green---who wrote that piece for Dell Sports---was early in his long career with the Detroit News when he wrote it. Green has long been one of my favorite sports writers from back in the days before getting most of my sports fix from the interwebs.