Head of the Family
Campy Russell Has Many Roles with the Cavs, Now Including Wall of Honor Inductee
by Joe Gabriele (@CavsJoeG)
3/25/22 | Cavs.com
When the Cavaliers Wall of Honor’s Class of 2022 is formally recognized on Saturday night, four individuals will be celebrated for their role in positively shaping the history of the franchise.
But whether it’s this year’s class, the inaugural class of 2019, next year’s or the year’s after that – one of those four individuals is always close to the center of it all.
Or, to use a basketball analogy – when it comes to shepherding former Cavaliers, the point man is Michael Campanella Russell.
As the Cavaliers Director of Alumni Relations, Campy is the guy who tethers the team’s past and present. And if he wasn’t being inducted along with this year’s Wall of Honor class, he’d be working tirelessly to paving the way and setting the stage for the group that was.
There’s a reason the late, great Joe Tait called Campy Russell “the ultimate team player.” And that didn’t end with his playing days.
But to simply see Campy in his role as caretaker of Cavs alumni or even as the co-host of “Cavaliers Live” alongside Jeff Phelps on Bally Sports Ohio is to sell the man short. One of 10 brothers and sisters and the father of five, the 8th overall pick in 1974 out of Michigan was a bad man on the basketball floor.
Not including his rookie season and a short three-game stint with the squad in 1984-85 before calling it quits, Campy averaged 18.2 ppg with the Cavs. He scored at 21.9 per game clip in his All-Star season (1978-79). In three Playoff appearances, the former All-American averaged 13.6 ppg during the Miracle run, 17.7 the next postseason and a gaudy 27.5 ppg in 1978.
Campy was named to the Cavs’ All-Time Team and remains in the team’s all-time Top Ten in six categories. In 2014, the former Wolverine was inducted in the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Russell family – which relocated from Jackson, Tennessee to Detroit when Campy was a child – produced three NBA players of the seven boys: along with Campy, there’s Frank, who played with the Bulls in the early-70s, and Walker, who played for Indy, Atlanta and Detroit in the mid-80s.
On Saturday night, the Cavaliers will honor not just one of its greatest players, but one of the organization’s greatest human beings.
Campy is a selfless individual. Kind, intelligent, perceptive and, at times, hilarious, the franchise just wouldn’t be the same without him. In many ways, he’s the man who keeps the Cavaliers family together.
The recent Wall of Honor inductee took a moment during a very busy weekend to chat with Cavs.com to talk about his decades-long run with the Wine & Gold and what it means to be inducted with this year’s class …
Campy averaged 21.9 points per and was named an Eastern Conference All-Star in 1979.
Photo by Dick Raphael/NBAE Getty Images
How did your big family shape you into what you became, both on the floor and as a person?
Campy Russell: I have to say that it came from (my father) Jake Russell, who played sports, but he didn’t play organized sports. He was born in 1903, so he came up in a tough time for a black man.
The second one would be my brother Conus. He was an all-purpose guy, a tough guy. Basketball-wise, he was probably the best shooter out of all of us. That’s where I got my bank shot from. He believed in the bank shot. Any time he got an angle – any time – he was gonna shoot a bank. He would shoot a bank from the corner if he had an angle.
There’s my brother Larry – Dr. Larry Russell – who’ll be here this weekend and Walker, who works for the Mavericks as a scout. Aaron was an all-purpose kinda guy, probably the most athletic out of all of us. And Ted, who was 6-7, 6-8 – about my size – who played basketball for Northern Arizona and tried out for the Bucks.
What were those family battles like as a kid?
Campy: For the most part it was competitive because we were highly competitive. But most of those battles were about learning opportunities. And the other part of it was protecting us at the playground, because sometimes the older kids didn’t want us playing.
My older brothers, Conus and Aaron, they always made it safe for us. Not that was a dangerous area, but just more like: ‘Hey, don’t y’all be messing with my brothers.’ That’s the kinda rep Conus had, and Aaron had. They knew everybody, everybody knew them. And everyone knew they didn’t take a lot of (stuff), and that they were protective of the family.
My sister, Rachel, when we had a basket on the garage, she could shoot better than all of us.
And my older sister, Mary Elizabeth, she was the first of us to go to college – she went to Lane College down in Jackson, Tennessee. The year I was born (1952) was the year she graduated college.
She’s still here with us. And she’s tougher than all these guys I told you about. Because she had to help raise all of us.
How important was it to your parents that you and your siblings got an education?
Campy: I think my father saw me play in the high school state championship one year. He came to a couple Michigan games and when we went to NCAA Tournaments, the Elite 8 or whatever. My mom traveled everywhere to watch us, she liked to be part of it.
But my dad really didn’t care that much about sports. Because he believed in hard work and achievement, and he understood early on, based on Mary Elizabeth, how important it was to go to college and get a higher education.
He made sure she went to college. And that kind of set the stage for everybody else.
What made the “Miracle of Richfield” team special, and do you seen any similarities with the current Cavaliers?
Campy: There are great comparisons, in terms of how we played with and for each other – under all circumstances. And we didn’t deviate from that.
We competed hard against each other in practice. We competed -- competed to a degree where we sharpened each other’s games. So, in that respect, there’s a similarity.
We’d play eight, nine guys regularly. Nine mostly. And there was no jealousy, no animosity – because it was about trying to win. And we were winning. Nobody was beyond reproach on that team, where people are afraid to say something to a certain guy because of how he’s going to react. Nah. You get the same sh*t as everybody else.
It was just a great combination of guys that all co-existed in the same space. And that’s the way this team is today.
You were actually just getting started during the Miracle season and went on to be an All-Star in 1979. What was that stretch like for you individually?
Campy: Everything kind of came together.
"It was just a great combination of guys that all co-existed in the same space. And that’s the way this team is today."
I was starting now; they’d made up their mind they wanted me to be a starter. But that year (1978-79) was a big year for me from a production standpoint. I had finally hit my stride, as far as being more consistent on a night-in, night-out basis.
And I grew in a leadership role, even though we had Nate Thurmond at the time.
Nate always encouraged me to be more, to give more. He’d always say: ‘You got more. You can give us more.’
And I think that kind of brought us together. We became really good friends, even after our playing days. He was a catalyst to push me to do more and to want to do more – and that culminated in at All-Star year and it got better and better from there.
What makes you the perfect fit for the position as the team’s Director of Alumni Relations – the man who reaches out and bring this all together?
Campy: I think it’s because that job is me. It’s who I am.
Whether it’s out in the community, whether it’s in the business community. Sports community. The neighborhood. East side, west side. Akron. That’s who I am, from the standpoint of knowing enough to be humble enough, to be grateful for what I do for this team and what I do for the city.
I’m that way with anybody I come in contact with. That’s how I look at it. It’s a position of caring and wanting the right thing to happen.
It’s a position where it’s not about you. And whoever has that position after me will realize that it’s not about you. It’s about the person you’re dealing with on any level.
It was a position that was brought forward by Dan Gilbert and his group when he bought the team, and it kind of morphed into what it is. It’s a position about relationships and a lot of different things that speak to who I am.
How does it feel being inducted into the Wall of Honor alongside this year’s group?
Campy: With that list, when you think of those three guys … Lenny Wilkens, Gordon Gund and World B. Free … I don’t even think I need to say anything.
When you think of World B. Free, as far as this team is concerned, he’s a franchise-saver. A guy that has great charisma, a guy who could fill it up and create great excitement, just because of the guy he was – and is.
Lenny was a childhood idol of mine.
When he won MVP of the All-Star Game, I remember watching him play, and I remember how smooth he was. And the one thing we all talked about after that game was here’s a guy who was left-handed, who hardly ever went right, and nobody could stop him from scoring. Nobody! It was most amazing thing I’d ever seen in an All-Star Game.
And I remember how determined, how proficient, how smart he was a player. And fast-forward to him as a coach – just an outstanding, dynamic teacher of the game of basketball.
I had an opportunity to be coached by him one time. It was in an exhibition between an NBA team and one of the Olympic teams. We played up in Seattle.
And just watching him, and the way he dealt with us – I’d never had a coach deal with me the way he did. How he communicated with you. How he taught you. How he showed you the way he wanted things to go.
We only practiced two or three days, but that interaction that I had with him really spoke to me – in terms of his intellect on how he relates to the game of basketball, and his intellect as how he deals with people.
And Gordon Gund speaks for himself, in terms of impact on Cleveland basketball, Cleveland sports, Cleveland business, Cleveland charities, foundations … What more can you say about him?
When he hears your voice, I feel like he never forgets you. And what he has meant to the city of Cleveland and the Cavaliers, the guy that put the franchise back on its feet and allowed it to reach the heights that it has today.
I’m honored in a big way to be in a class with those guys.