Center Bill Walton, whose prodigious passing and rebounding skills led him to win two collegiate national championships at UCLA and one each with the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics, and who overcame a stutter to become an eloquent commentator, died Monday at his San Diego home. He was 71.
The NBA announced he died of colon cancer.
A red-headed hippie and avid Grateful Dead fan, Walton was a follower of UCLA coach John Wooden and a key figure on the Bruins teams that won NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973 and recorded an 88-game winning streak that began in 1971. He was named NBA Player of the Year three times.
Walton’s best game came in the 1973 national championship game against Memphis State in St. Louis. After getting into foul trouble in the first half, he scored a record 44 points on 21-of-22 shooting and grabbed 11 rebounds to help UCLA win 87–66, the school’s ninth championship in 10 years.
Walton, not yet known for his bombastic, stream-of-consciousness speaking style, was reluctant to say much after the game, telling reporters as he left the locker room, “Excuse me, I have to go see my friends. I’m going home now.”
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 of his vegetarianism and red ponytail and beard to win a championship under coach Jack Ramsay in 1977.
“I think Jack Ramsey got to Walton,” Knicks general manager Eddie Donovan told New York Times columnist Dave Anderson. “Any coach in the league, Jack Ramsey is the closest to a John Wooden mold. He’s educated and responsive. I think Walton responded to that.”
But the question that lingered throughout Walton’s NBA career was: How much better would he have been had he not been so injured? Better than Bill Russell? Better than Wilt Chamberlain? Better than one of his predecessors at UCLA, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?
Walton never played more than 70 games in a season — 58 in 1977-78, the season in which he was named Most Valuable Player — and missed four seasons (1978-79, 1980-81, 1981-82 and 1987-88).
“When I’m healthy, I think I play really well,” he said early in his Portland career.
He was asked if anyone had seen the real Bill Walton.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
He injured his knee on a playground as a teenager, but, as he wrote in his 2016 memoir, Back from the Dead: Searching for the Sound, Shining the Light, and Bringing it Down, it was “the deformity of my foot, my imperfect foundation, which led to repeated stress fractures and ultimately to my current state.”
He has had approximately 40 orthopedic surgeries, mostly on his feet and ankles.
“My feet were not built to last, and they were not built to play basketball,” he added. “My bone structure, my structural foundation, was inflexible and rigid and could not absorb the endless stress and shock that comes with 26 years of running, jumping, turning, twisting and vigorous movement.”
William Theodore Walton III was born on November 5, 1952, in La Mesa, near downtown San Diego, California. 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 he rarely spoke in class at school and was happy when he wasn’t called on by the teacher.
In his memoir, he recalled that after a neighboring family dismantled a backboard and basket and he and his father reassembled it at home, his “basketball fever soared.”
“I was in heaven,” he wrote. “I could, and did, play whenever I wanted.”
It was the beginning of a long love affair with basketball, leading his La Mesa Helix High School teams to two state championships. At one point, the team won 49 straight games. He went to UCLA, but was scouted when it was a powerhouse in college basketball. Under Walton’s guidance, the Bruins went 30-0 in two seasons and compiled an 86-4 record in his three seasons on the varsity team.
While at UCLA, Walton was arrested during a protest against the Vietnam War, and he was also politically conscious of his position as a white player on a mostly black team.
“Black people have been treated unfairly 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 respect the way they’ve risen from the injustices they’ve endured. They’re my friends, and I feel for them. I know that as a white person, I’ve gotten what I deserve.”
Walton was close friends with left-wing radicals Jack and Mickey Scott, and appeared with them at a press conference in San Francisco in 1975. The Scotts went into hiding, but re-emerged amid accusations (Scott later admitted) that they had harboured Patricia Hearst, who had been kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Walton had briefly lived with Scott in Portland and had been questioned about them by the FBI. Addressing Scott at a press conference, Walton said, “I apologize for any inconvenience caused. Rest assured that I will no longer be speaking to my enemies.”
With injuries derailing his career, Walton left the Blazers in 1979 to sign with the San Diego (now Los Angeles) Clippers, but injuries again kept him out of games for four seasons. In 1985, the Clippers traded him to the Boston Celtics, where he found joy as a reserve player and won the Sixth Man of the Year award when the Celtics beat the Houston Rockets to win the 1986 NBA title.
“There was a big piece missing from the Celtics’ jigsaw puzzle: a replacement for Robert Parish at center. And Walton fit the bill perfectly,” Sports Illustrated wrote about the team’s starting center in 1986.
However, a foot injury limited Walton to just 10 games the following season, which would be his final appearance. In his 10 seasons, he averaged 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.
He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.
Last year, ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series ran a four-part profile of Walton’s life, calling him “the luckiest man in the world” despite his injury-limited career.
Gass’ first marriage to Susan Gass 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 for the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings); his sister, Kathy Walton; his brother, Andy; and nine grandchildren. His brother, Bruce, died in 2019.
In the 1990s, Walton turned to an unlikely new profession as a television game analyst.
“English is my fourth language, after my stumbling, stammering and awkwardness,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2000. He dealt with 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 Networks. His call-up partners included Marv Albert, Tom Hammond and Dave Pasch.
Walton’s commentary was a unique style that combined basketball enthusiasm with bizarre fantasies and topics about music and science. He was so eloquent and talkative that, if given the time, he could talk for an entire game without letting his partner finish.
Walton’s catchphrase, “Throw it down, big man,” which he used to shout at centers and forwards, inspired a replacement game broadcast called “Throw it Down,” featuring Walton and co-host Jason Benetti, with Walton providing analysis and stories. The show began streaming on NBA League Pass in the 2022-23 season.
His opinions were sometimes expressed in unconventional terms.
“Hey, man, that’s not foul play!” he once declared. “It may violate every rule of human decency, but it’s not foul play.” At another time he exclaimed, “Beautiful stuff! Einstein, Da Vinci, Jobs! And now Tyreke Evans!”
