Celtics legend Bill Russell, widely cited as the greatest winner in the history of professional team sports, says he didn’t count his wins.

Russell told NBA.com Thursday he wasn’t aware of how many championships in a row he won until well after the fact. Russell won 11 championships with the Celtics, including eight in a row from 1959 to 1966.

“It might seem strange but I did not know our Celtic teams won eight championships in a row until about 20 years ago when I read about it in a game program,” Russell said Thursday. “Our focus was always on that particular season, always one year at a time. The year we played had nothing to do with the previous year or the next year. That’s just the way it was.”

Russell is and always will be the ultimate team-first guy, but not knowing the exact number of titles he won for the first 40 years of his retirement seems like a pretty important detail to gloss over.