Yep, Bill Russell Flipped Off Charles Barkley on Live TV at the NBA Awards (Video)

And basketball fans fell in love all over again with the 11-time champ

Bill Russell at the NBA Awards
TNT

NBA legend Bill Russell became Twitter’s favorite grandpa Monday night after the 12-time all star flipped the bird to Charles Barkley live on television during TNT’s broadcast of the NBA Awards.

The moment came when Barkley, presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Oscar Robertson, took a second to thank several other NBA legends, including Russell. At that point the camera turned to the (very sharply dressed) retired Celtics center, who, well, watch below:

So why, pray tell, did the 11-time NBA champion flip off Sir Charles? Russell explained on Twitter, in a very sorry-not-sorry statement, that he just can’t help himself whenever he sees Barkley.

Not that an apology was actually needed. As you can hear in the video above, the audience broke out into loud laughter when Russell (who I’ll bet definitely didn’t forget he was on live TV) did the deed. And on Twitter, fans were agog about him, and the creation of what will almost certainly become a new everyone’s-g0-to-gif whenever someone annoys them on social media.

Read on for some pretty damn funny and occasionally just accurate tweets celebrating Russell’s gesture.

This gets points for being both true and a brilliant pun:

Topical:

https://twitter.com/natalieweiner/status/1011448325227339776

Life goals:

And plenty agree this makes him the best-ever in the sport:

https://twitter.com/MitchDaBalla/status/1011467117957279744

https://twitter.com/SquashySavage/status/1011468776137723904

Ross A. Lincoln

Ross joined TheWrap as a news editor in 2017; he was previously associate editor at Deadline from 2015-2017, and before that comics editor at The Escapist, and features editor at Game Front. As a writer, in addition to TheWrap his bylines can be found at Deadline, Box Office, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The…

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