1963 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Bill Russell

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Johnny Green (13), Lee Shaffer (12)

Game context

The 1963 All-Star Game, played January 16 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena before 14,838 fans, gave Boston's Bill Russell his first career All-Star MVP award, a fitting individual honor for a player whose value had always been measured more in winning and defensive dominance than in gaudy scoring totals. Russell finished with 19 points, a game-high 24 rebounds, and 5 assists in 37 minutes as the East won a tight, back-and-forth contest, 115-108. The East led throughout — 32-25 after the first quarter, 56-50 at the half, and 80-73 through three — before both teams matched each other with 35 points in the fourth to preserve the final margin. Russell's rebounding was again the story of the game, but he had scoring help: Oscar Robertson led all scorers with 21 points for the East, while on the Western side, Bob Pettit continued his string of standout individual All-Star efforts with 25 points and 13 rebounds even in defeat. The game marked the first time the event was held in Los Angeles, reflecting the league's ongoing westward expansion — the Minneapolis Lakers had relocated to Los Angeles just three years earlier, in 1960, bringing NBA basketball to the West Coast's biggest market for the first time and setting up the arena that would host this game. Red Auerbach, in what was becoming an almost automatic assignment by this point in the decade, coached the East for a run of consecutive seasons, while Fred Schaus of the Lakers coached the West for a second straight year, coaching in his own building in front of the hometown fans. Chick Hearn, already establishing himself as the voice of the Lakers on local broadcasts, called the game alongside Bud Blattner for the national audience. Russell's individual MVP award came in the midst of a Celtics dynasty that had already won five of the previous six NBA championships by this point and would go on to capture the 1963 title as well that spring, part of an eventual run of eight consecutive championships (1959-1966) that remains, to this day, the longest sustained championship streak in the history of North American major professional team sports — a run for which Russell, more than any other player, was directly and repeatedly credited as the driving defensive and rebounding force. Los Angeles's hosting debut also foreshadowed the intense Lakers-Celtics rivalry that would come to define the 1960s Finals, as the two franchises met in the championship round six times across the decade, with Boston winning every single one.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1963 NBA All-Star Game