An NCAA scoring champion, a coach in the "Greatest Game Ever Played," the original Sonics center, the inventor of the Dunk Contest, the Hall of Famer affectionately known as "Hondo," and the first player of color in NBA history are amongst the basketball people we lost in 2019.
When you win 11 NBA titles in 13 seasons as Bill Russell did, you don't just earn a lot of hardware for yourself, you also help fill up the trophy cases of plenty of teammates.
Either injuries, defections, retirements, or just plain apathy doomed these teams from the beginning, in their quest to repeat as champions.
