Twenty-nine years ago come December, Bill Russell arrived in Boston. Hello. Bill. Goodbye, NBA, as it then existed.

"He changed the game," says Pete Newell, Golden State's director of player personnel. "He was the first to bring into focus what a shot blocker could do." Russell was a one-man revolution. In his 13-year career the Celtics won 11 NBA titles; Russell retired in 1969 with a reputation as the ultimate winner, the yardstick against which all team players would have to be measured.

As the new season opens, another shot-blocking franchise may be with us in the 7-foot, evenly muscled, 240-pound person of Patrick Ewing, the first pick in the rich 1985 draft. The comparisons with Russell are inevitable. Ewing is special in many of the same ways that Russell was. His offense is still undeveloped—certainly Akeem Olajuwon was more advanced as an offensive player when he came into the league last year. It is because of Ewing's defense, as was the case with Russell, that his presence is so commanding. Ewing is a greyhound getting up and down the floor, just as Russell, an outstanding track and field athlete, was. Ewing is intimidating, intense and tough, qualities epitomized by Russell. And like Russell, he is a proud and enigmatic man.

By contrast, Wayman Tisdale, the draft's estimable consolation prize, picked second behind Ewing, is the happy warrior. Unreasonable expectations hover around the top two like storm clouds. Each is being pressured to lift ailing franchises—Ewing the Knicks, Tisdale the Pacers. The only certain thing is that, in the process of trying, the former will wear his characteristic scowl and the latter his warm Okie smile.

The pressure on some of the rookies drafted behind Ewing and Tisdale is no less weighty, only less publicized. Don't forget that the NBA has become a two-franchise elite—the Lakers and the Celtics—and everybody else needs help. If not right now, rook, then how about an hour from now? For all the obligatory preseason platitudes about "breaking in our rookies slowly," quite a few are expected to contribute right away.

The Clippers, in selecting Benoit Benjamin third, were saying that they couldn't make it to the top with their incumbent center, James Donaldson. The SuperSonics, in making Xavier McDaniel the fourth pick, were advertising their need to give Jack Sikma some help up front. The Hawks already had two centers with a lot of minutes when they drafted fifth-pick Jon Koncak, but they clearly foresee that Koncak will become a franchise lifter—not a Tree Rollins.

The Sacramento Kings went chasing after the Knicks' veteran free-agent center, Bill Cartwright, and couldn't land him. Hey, sixth-pick Joe Kleine, can you fill the bill in the middle? And the Warriors project the No. 7 choice, Chris Mullin, as their starting shooting guard. As of Sunday, though, Mullin still had not signed with Golden State.

Not surprisingly, the rookies in the most comfortable position are the Celtic and Laker choices picked toward the bottom of the first round: guard Sam Vincent (20th by the Celtics) and handyman A.C. Green (23rd by the Lakers). Vincent and Green can afford to take their time, learn from the best, supply a few quality minutes and go to bed at night dreaming of championship rings. Meanwhile, Ewing will play about 40 minutes a game, score, rebound, run the floor, play protector in Hubie Brown's trapping defense and go to bed hearing the exhortations of those banner-starved fans in Madison Square Garden.

This year's draft has been compared to 1981's, which yielded such frontline players as Isiah Thomas, Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, Buck Williams, Larry Nance, Orlando Woolridge, Kelly Tripucka and Albert King. Says Phoenix general manager Jerry Colangelo, "I look at this draft and see a number of players who can make an immediate impact, maybe one through 11. That's unusual."

Equally unusual is the international flavor of this year's rookies, beginning with the Jamaican-born Ewing. Three other foreign-born players were drafted in the first round—Detlef Schrempf and Uwe Blab from West Germany and Bill Wennington from Canada. All are with the Mavericks. Among the second-round overseas picks to stick is that 7'7" curio from the Sudan, Manute Bol, with the Bullets, and the muscular Haitian Yvon Joseph, a New Jersey Net. And as of Sunday the Phoenix Suns were still negotiating with the Bulgarian Basketball Federation to pry loose their seventh-round pick, power forward Georgi Glouckov.