Rename Logan Airport for Celtics legend Bill Russell? Mass. officials don’t rule it out.

Bill Russell, a member of the Boston Celtics 1966 Championship team, is honored at halftime of the game between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat at TD Garden on April 13, 2016 in Boston. (Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

The ball is now in the politicians’ court.

Longtime journalist Mark Leibovich last week pitched renaming Logan International Airport after the late Boston Celtics basketball player and coach Bill Russell.

Russell, who wore the No. 6, died in July 2022 at the age of 88. The obituaries laid out his career in basketball: 11 championship wins, two of them as a coach who was also a player. He captained a U.S. Olympics team to a gold-medal win and later went on to become the NBA’s first Black coach to win a championship.

During his career, Leibovich wrote, Russell was also a civil rights advocate who dealt with racists and vandals.

“Naming the airport for Russell would send a powerful message about the region it serves: Boston has come a long way toward racial comity since the benighted 1960s, but its journey is ongoing, and—despite Massachusetts’s liberal bent—has taken longer than it should have,” wrote Leibovich, who grew up in the Boston area and got his start at the now-defunct Phoenix , an alternative newspaper.

He added: “Airports are works in progress, like cities and people. They represent humanity going places, and, ideally, communities striving to catch up.”

The pitch came as the current-day Celtics finished off the Dallas Mavericks Monday night for the team’s 18th NBA championship. The renaming has the support of Russell family members.

Earlier in the day, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Celtics fan, told reporters, “I’m up for conversations” about honoring Russell and his career. “Bill Russell is the greatest athlete of any sport, of all time,” she said. “And so we know we have not reached what we need to do in terms of really recognizing that legacy and how important that is, and how proud we are in Boston.”

As Wu spoke to reporters outside City Hall, steps from a bronze statue of the basketball legend, Russell’s widow, Jeannine Russell, happened to be walking by and was pulled into the scrum. “I’m 100 percent behind it,” she said.

In a separate press availability inside the State House later in the day, Gov. Maura Healey left the door open to the idea. Healey, also a Celtics fan, briefly played professional basketball in Austria.

Asked Monday about renaming Logan, Healey said she recently met with Karen Russell, Bill’s daughter, but added, “I think we’ll leave [the renaming idea] for another time.”

Renaming Logan would require a bill to make its way through the Legislature, which could be a tall order for now, with less than two months left until the end of formal sessions. State lawmakers have their hands full with a budget, housing bond bill, economic development package, and climate legislation, to name just a few of the issues on Beacon Hill’s front burner.

Logan Airport, which has four passenger terminals and ranks among the country’s busiest, is operated by the quasi-public agency Massachusetts Port Authority. References to the airport’s namesake are hard to find on Massport’s website.

Logan was named for Gen. Edward Lawrence Logan, who died in 1939 at the age of 64. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and served on the Boston City Council, in the Massachusetts Senate, and as a judge in the South Boston Municipal Court.

“I mean no disrespect to General Logan. He had a good run,” Leibovich wrote. “They can rename Terminal C the Logan Terminal or something. Or name a special Dunkin’ after him; there are about a dozen of them at the airport.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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