Bill Walton, a center whose excellent passing and rebounding skills helped him win two national college championships with UCLA and one with the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics, and who overcame a stutter to become a garrulous commentator, died Monday at his home in San Diego. He was 71 years old.
The NBA said he died of colon cancer.
A red-haired hippie and devoted Grateful Dead fan, Walton was a student of UCLA coach John Wooden and a center on the Bruins teams that won NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973, while also pulling Long streak of 88 wins starting in 1971. Three times named national player of the year.
Walton’s best game was the 1973 national championship against Memphis State, played in St. Louis. Louis. He fouled out in the first half, but went on to score a school-record 44 points on 21-for-22 shooting and had 11 rebounds in UCLA’s 87-66 win. This is the school’s ninth title in 10 years.
Walton — still not known for his hyperbolic, often stream-of-consciousness speaking skills — refused to say much after the game. As he left the dressing room, he told reporters: “Sorry, I want to go see my friends. I’m breaking up.”
He played one more year at UCLA before being selected first overall by Portland in the 1974 NBA Draft. He overcame injuries, two losing seasons under Coach Lenny Wilkens and criticism about his vegetarian diet as well as his ponytail and red beard before winning the 1977 championship under Coach Jack Ramsay.
“I think Jack Ramsay has reached out to Walton,” Eddie Donovan, the Knicks general manager, told The New York Times columnist Dave Anderson. “Of all the coaches in our league, Jack Ramsay is the closest to being a John Wooden type — erudite, ready. I think Walton responded to that.”
But the question that lingered throughout Walton’s NBA career was how well he would have played without so many injuries. Better than Bill Russell? Withered Chamberlain? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of your 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 all four seasons ( 1978-79, 1980-81, 1981). -82 and 1987-88).
“When I was healthy,” he said early in his career in Portland, “I thought I played very well.”
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. However, as he wrote in one of his memoirs, “Back from the Dead: Finding the Sound, Shining the Light and Throwing It Down” (2016), it was “my deformed legs – the background My faulty foundation, led to an endless series of stress fractures that ultimately caused my entire current turmoil.”
He has undergone about 40 orthopedic surgeries, mainly on his feet and ankles.
“My legs weren’t made for survival — or for playing basketball,” he added. “The structural foundation of my skeleton – inflexible and rigid – could not withstand the endless pressure and impact of running, jumping, turning, 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, 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 in school he almost never talked in class and was happy when teachers did not call on him.
He recalled in his memoir that “basketball fever skyrocketed” after a neighbor’s family dismantled its backboard and basket and he and his father reassembled it at their home.
“I was in heaven,” he wrote. “I could play whenever I wanted, and I did.”
It was the beginning of a long love affair with basketball, leading to two state championships for his Helix High School team, in La Mesa. The team won 49 consecutive games at one point. He transferred to 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 collegiate campaigns.
While 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 most of his teammates being black.
“Black people have been getting a raw deal for a long time,” he told sportswriter Bill Libby after his arrest, according to The Nation newspaper. “A lot of my teammates are black and I really admire how they rise above their raw deal. They are my friends and I sympathize with them. I know I got twice what I deserved because I’m white.”
Walton was friendly with radical leftists Jack and Micki Scott and appeared with them at a press conference in San Francisco in 1975. The Scotts went into hiding and re-emerged amid accusations that they sheltered Patricia Hearst (Scott later admitted that he did) after she was kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Walton briefly shared a home in Portland with the Scotts and was questioned by the FBI about them. Speaking to the Scotts at the press conference, Walton said, “I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused you and you can rest assured. that I would 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 many of their games. them for four seasons. In 1985, the Clippers traded him to the Boston Celtics, where he found joy as a reserve player, winning his sixth Man of the Year Award, as the Celtics won the 1986 NBA championship, defeating Houston Rockets.
“The Celtics’ jigsaw was missing a giant piece — a center that spelled Robert Parish — and Walton nestled in just the right spot,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 1986, referring to the team’s starting center .
But a leg injury limited Walton to 10 games the following season, the last he played. In 10 seasons, he averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds a game.
He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.
Last year, ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series told the story of Walton’s life in four parts. Although his career was limited by injury, the series still had a title “The luckiest guy in the world.”
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 coaches of the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings; his sister, Cathy Walton; brother Andy; and nine grandchildren. His brother Bruce died in 2019.
In the 1990s, Walton turned to a surprising new career: television game analyst.
“English is my fourth language,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2000, “after stumbling, stammering and stumbling.” He dealt with his stutter using techniques he learned from sportscaster Marty Glickman, and continued to call NBA and college games for several networks, including NBC, ESPN , CBS and Pac-12 Networks. His playing partners include Marv Albert, Tom Hammond and Dave Pasch.
Walton brought a casual style to his commentary, combining his excessive passion for basketball with flights of fancy related to music and science. He is a talkative person and so talkative that if given airspace, he could talk for the entire match without letting his teammates talk.
His catchphrase, “Throw it down, big man,” which he shouted at centers and forwards, inspired “Throw it down,” an alternative game broadcast featuring him and co-host, Jason Benetti, in which Walton provided analysis and storytelling. It begins appearing on NBA League Pass in the 2022-23 season.
His opinions can sometimes be cloaked in unusual language.
“Come on, that’s not a foul!” he once declared. “It may violate all rules of human decency, but it is not a foul.” Another time, he exclaimed: “A beautiful thing! Einstein, da Vinci, Jobs! And now Tyreke Evans!”
