THE RELEVANCE OF BILL WALTON NEVER WENT AWAY, ON AND OFF THE COURT
Go back a half-century and see him arrested in a protest at UCLA, as he became the most fundamental big man long before Nikola Jokic was born — yet kids in the 2020s only raved about his TV comedy
The student protesters will be thrown “out of the country,” claims Donald Trump, and all can relate to Bill Walton. He was arrested 52 years ago at UCLA for planting his body on Wilshire Boulevard and lifting his arms, where he angered a coach more important to life skills than the former President. John Wooden told Walton to leave the team over his Vietnam War demonstrations, forcing him to clean up his red head and return.
But soon enough, under the employ of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, Walton was sharing his house with Jack and Micki Scott. Had they been involved in kidnapping Patty Hearst? Was he a headband-wearing stoner dealing with Symbionese Liberation Army loons? “Stand with us in the rejection of the United States government,” he said, which prompted the Blazers to “deplore Bill Walton’s statement” and call for support of “the United States (as) the freest and most democratic nation in the world. We and the people throughout the world recognize this.”
Not true, Walton said then. “Protesting is what gets things done,” he said. “The drive for positive change requires action. The forces of evil don’t just change their ways.”
There and then are the first pieces of evidence that Walton remained relevant until his death. He passed away of cancer at 71, but the recent praising of Nikola Jokic as the most fundamental of all-time big men brought a firm reaction from Magic Johnson. “They talk about Jokic being the most skilled center, but Bill Walton was the first!” he wrote on social media. “From shooting jump shots to making incredible passes, he was one of the smartest basketball players to ever live.” He raised hell on campus. He won 73 straight games in college, found places on the NBA’s 50th and 75th anniversary teams and fell into a frantic whirl as a sideline broadcaster, where he’d wear his Grateful Dead t-shirts and spoke of the fallen Pacific-12 as “the Conference of Champions.”
His relevance is astounding. He was more impactful off the court than he was on it, where he won two NCAA championships and two professional titles and reached the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993 with magnificent moments in an injury-wrecked career. He and straight man Dave Pasch could have moved on to “Saturday Night Live.” You wish his feet and ankles didn’t leave him despondent, requiring 39 surgeries as he missed 762 games. “My legs were pretty much shot by the time I got to the NBA in 1974,” he said of a knee injury on a playground. “I peaked when I was 12.” At one point, he apologized for demanding a trade out of Portland, which lost patience with him.
“I’m here to try and make amends for the mistakes and errors of the past,” Walton said. “I regret that I wasn’t a better person. A better player. I regret that I got hurt. I regret the circumstances in which I left the Portland Trail Blazers’ family. I just wish I could do a lot of things over, but I can’t. So I’m here to apologize, to try and make amends, and to try and start over and make it better.”
He should have won more NBA trophies, but he survived in more profound ways. He played through injuries and did the same at courtside, where he pondered suicide after undergoing a spinal fusion. “I had been in the hospital, on my death bed, wanting to kill myself. For years,” he said in 2009. “I was in a terrible spot.” That’s why he always called himself “the luckiest man in the world.”
“When you face death, it changes you,” Walton said. “And you are never the same again.” That’s why he unleashed a style of sportscasting that never will be repeated. As Awful Announcing reported, he said: “Yesterday, we celebrated Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity. Today, Fabricio Oberto is defying it.”
And said: “If you ever think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never spent a night in bed with a mosquito, or you’ve never played basketball against Taylor from Utah — No. 11 in your program, No. 1 in your heart.”
And said: “John Stockton is one of the true marvels, not just of basketball, or in America, but in the history of Western Civilization!”
And said: “When I think of Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven and the age of the romantics.”
You never knew he’d overcome a stuttering problem, with the help of sportscaster Marty Glickman. “I lived most of my life by myself. But as soon as I got on the court I was fine,” Walton told the Oregonian. “But in life, being so self-conscious, red hair, big nose, freckles and goofy, nerdy looking face and can’t talk at all. I was incredibly shy and never said a word. Then, when I was 28 I learned how to speak. It’s become my greatest accomplishment of my life and everybody else’s biggest nightmare.”
He didn’t speak as much as he orchestrated the matter. He minimized games while magnifying the human worth. “The world feels so much heavier now,” said his friend, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “On the court, Bill was a fierce player, but off the court he wasn’t happy unless he did everything he could to make everyone around him happy. He was the best of us.”
“I love him as a friend and as a teammate,” Larry Bird said. “It was a thrill for me to play with my childhood idol and together we earned an NBA championship. He is one of the greatest ever to play the game. I am sure that all of my teammates are as grateful as I am that we were able to know Bill. He was such a joy to know and he will be sorely missed.”
“Bill Walton was one of the most consequential players of his era,” said the Boston Celtics, who won a 1986 title with Walton on the team. “He could do it all, possessing great timing, complete vision of the floor, excellent fundamentals and was of one of the greatest passing big men in league history.”
“Truly one of a kind,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “What I will remember most about him was his zest for life. He was a regular presence at events — always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth. I treasured our close friendship, envied his boundless energy and admired the time he took with every person he encountered. As a cherished member of the NBA family for 50 years, Bill will be deeply missed by all those who came to know and love him.”
Most legends play basketball and move on. Bill Walton never left until death carried him. And, we sense, he’ll continue to live.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.