15 best NCAA basketball players we wish played in the Twitter era

7. Best NCAA basketball players before Twitter: Bill Russell, San Francisco

Jump in the way-back machine kids, we’re going for a ride!

As most of you know, a lot of the very early basketball stars were cut from a completely different cloth. The game has grown and changed in almost unreal ways, but even in the 50s and 60s, the talent was still tremendous — though it’s fair to assume most social media, especially Twitter, users won’t be old enough to have seen it.

Bill Russell is a perfect example of one of the greats of the olden game. Russell led the University of San Francisco to two consecutive NCAA Championships in ’55 and ’56 and would go on to be the main centerpiece of the Boston Celtics decade of dominance, in which Russell won a massive 11 NBA championships.

Many know the statistics behind Russell, and even some people know that many regard Russell as a go-to G.O.A.T. alternative for basketball, but few know just how dominant Russell was as a player, and how fun it’d be if he had been around in the modern days of Twitter and other social media services.

At 6-foot-10 and 215 pounds, Russell no doubt would still be able to size-up with the most athletic big men in today’s game. That’s not to mention a massive seven-foot-four wingspan, and stellar shot-blocking and man-to-man defense.

Also a track and field athlete at the San Francisco who was ranked as the seventh-best high-jumper in the world in 1956, Russell would’ve lit up the Twitter-sphere with his athleticism and raw, untapped potential when he began his collegiate career.

Another player on our list that made the NCAA rewrite the rules thanks to dominant play (the lane was widened for his junior year, and later rules were put in place as well), Russell would’ve lit a firestorm in the Twitter-age.