Bill Walton, a center whose extraordinary passing and rebounding abilities helped him win two college national championships with UCLA, one with the Portland Trail Blazers and one with the NBA’s Boston Celtics, and who overcame a stuttering to become a talkative commentator, died Monday at his home in San Diego. He was 71 years old.
The NBA announced that he died of colon cancer.
Red-headed hippie and devoted Grateful Dead fan, Walton was an acolyte of UCLA coach John Wooden and the hub of the Bruins team that won NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973 and extended a streak of 88 consecutive victories which began in 1971. named national player of the year three times.
Walton’s biggest game was the 1973 national championship against Memphis State, played in St. Louis. He struggled in the first half, but then scored a game-high 44 points on 21-of-22 shooting and grabbed 11 rebounds in UCLA’s 87-66 victory. It was the ninth title won by the school in 10 years.
Walton – not yet known for his often hyperbolic conscience-speaking skills – refused to say much after the game. As he left the locker room, he told reporters: “Excuse me, I want to go meet my friends. I’m separating.
He played one more year at UCLA before being selected by Portland first overall in the 1974 NBA draft. He suffered injuries, two losing seasons under coach Lenny Wilkens, and criticism regarding his vegetarian diet, red ponytail and beard before winning the 1977 championship under coach Jack Ramsay.
“I think Jack Ramsay has reached Walton,” Knicks general manager Eddie Donovan told New York Times columnist Dave Anderson. “Of all the coaches in our league, Jack Ramsay is the closest to the John Wooden type – erudite and available. I think Walton answered that.
But the question that lingered throughout Walton’s NBA career was how good he would have been without his numerous injuries. Better than Bill Russell? Wilt Chamberlain? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of his predecessors at UCLA?
Walton never played more than 70 games in a season – even in the 1977-78 season, when he was named Most Valuable Player, he only played in 58 games – and he missed four full seasons (1978-79, 1980-81, 1981). -82 and 1987-88).
“When I’m healthy,” he said early in his Portland career, “I play really well, I think.”
He was asked if anyone had seen the real Bill Walton.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
He injured his knee as a teenager during a playground game. But, as he writes in one of his memoirs, “Back From the Dead: Searching for the Sound, Shining the Light and Throwing It Down” (2016), it is “my malformed feet – my faulty foundations, which led to a never-ending series of stress fractures that ultimately caused the whole mess I’m in now.
He has undergone around 40 orthopedic surgeries, mainly on his feet and ankles.
“My feet were not made to last or to play basketball,” he added. “My skeletal and structural foundations – inflexible and rigid – could not absorb the endless stress and impact of running, jumping, spinning, twisting and pounding for 26 years. »
William Theodore Walton III was born on November 5, 1952, in La Mesa, California, near downtown San Diego. His father, named Ted, was a social worker and adult educator, and his mother, Gloria (Hickey) Walton, was a librarian. Bill was extremely shy because of his stutter and wrote that at school he almost never spoke in class and was happy when teachers didn’t call on him.
He recalled in his memoir that his “basketball fever peaked” after the neighboring family took down the backboard and basket and he and his father put them back together at home.
“I was in heaven,” he wrote. “I could play whenever I wanted, and I did.”
It was the start of a long love affair with basketball that led to two state championships for his team at Helix High School in La Mesa. The team won 49 consecutive games at one point. He then joined UCLA, recruited when it was the dominant team in college basketball. With Walton, the Bruins had two 30-0 seasons and finished 86-4 in his three college campaigns.
At UCLA, Walton was arrested during a protest against the Vietnam War. He was also politically aware of his status as a white player with predominantly black teammates.
“Black people have been mistreated for a long time,” he told sportswriter Bill Libby after his arrest, according to The Nation. “A lot of my teammates are black and I really admire how they overcame their raw situation. They are my friends and I feel for them. I know I got twice as much as I deserve because I’m white.
Walton was friends with left-wing radicals Jack and Micki Scott and appeared with them at a press conference in San Francisco in 1975. The Scotts had gone into hiding and resurfaced amid accusations that they had harbored Patricia Hearst (Scott later admitted he had done so) after she had been kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Walton had briefly shared a home in Portland with the Scotts and was questioned about them by the FBI. Addressing the Scotts at the press conference, Walton said: “I am sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you, and you can rest assured. that I will never speak to the enemy again.
With injuries derailing his career, Walton left the Blazers to sign with the San Diego (now Los Angeles) Clippers in 1979, but, once again, injuries kept him from playing in many of their games for four seasons. In 1985, the Clippers traded him to the Boston Celtics, where he found joy as a reserve player, winning the Sixth Man of the Year award, as the Celtics won the 1986 NBA title by defeating the Houston Rockets.
“The Celtics puzzle was missing a giant piece – a center to spell Robert Parish – and Walton snuggled in comfortably,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 1986, referring to the team’s starting center.
But foot injuries limited Walton to 10 games the following season, the last he would play. Over 10 seasons, he averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.
He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.
Last year, ESPN’s documentary series “30 for 30” chronicled Walton’s life in four parts. Despite his injury-limited career, the series was titled “The Luckiest Guy Alive.”
His first marriage, to Susan Guth, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Lori (Matsuoka) Walton; his sons from his first marriage, Adam, Nate, Chris and Luke, former coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings; his sister, Cathy Walton; his brother Andy; and nine grandchildren. His brother Bruce died in 2019.
In the 1990s, Walton turned to an unlikely new career: game show analyst.
“English is my fourth language,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2000, “after Stumbling, Stuttering and Bumbling.” He managed his stutter using techniques he learned from sportscaster Marty Glickman, and went on to call NBA and college games for several networks, including NBC, ESPN, CBS and the Pac-12 Network. His play-by-play partners included Marv Albert, Tom Hammond and Dave Pasch.
Walton brought an idiosyncratic style to his commentary, which combined his exaggerated enthusiasm for basketball with strange flights of fancy and musical and scientific references. He was so talkative and windy that if he had the air space, he could talk for an entire game without letting his partner speak.
His catchphrase, “Throw it down, big man”, which he shouted at centers and forwards, inspired “Throw It Down”, an alternative game show that featured him with his co-host, Jason Benetti, in which Walton offered analysis and told stories. He began appearing on NBA League Pass during the 2022-23 season.
His opinions could sometimes be hidden under unconventional verbal clothing.
“Come on, it wasn’t a mistake!” he once declared. “This may be a violation of all the rules of human decency, but it is not a fault.” Another time he exclaimed: “A thing of beauty!” Einstein, da Vinci, jobs! And now Tyreke Evans!