Remembering the singular Grateful Red

Bill Walton was the quintessential southern California baby boomer turned flower child.

No one or five articles can adequately describe the multi-layered personality of Big Bill. He was the rare great athlete who transcended his sport.

Armed with boundless energy and enthusiasm, he was a fierce Vietnam War protestor, a political champion of minorities and underdogs, even though he suffered from a severe stuttering problem. Waltn was a serious bicyclist and a renowned music lover, especially of his favorite band, the Grateful Dead.

Despite suffering through dozens of surgeries, mostly on his feet and knees, he still proclaimed himself the luckiest guy on Earth, refusing to give in to pain and negativity.

After retiring as a player, Bill overcame a debilitating stutter to become an acclaimed, hyperbolic NBA and college basketball analyst. Some, including favorite Portland teammate Maurice Lucas, theorized he talked so much on TV in order to make up for all the years when he couldn’t speak well.

But before that, basketball became his outlet for all the pent-up frustration and inability to express himself clearly.

The reason for his absence from Pac-12 college hoop games on ESPN this past February and March went undisclosed publicly, an ominous sign that something was very wrong with Bill’s delicate health. Perhaps it is fitting that his beloved west coast league perished at the same time he died from cancer.

But in a previous life, the outspoken political activist also happened to be a seven-foot, redhead superb center who at his peak, may have been the best all-around pivotman to ever play college and NBA basketball. Many experts, from John Wooden to Jack Ramsay, have opined that he was.

Recently on ESPN, he was called an older version of Denver center Nikola Jokic in an attempt to give younger fans an idea of his game, but Walton was much more athletic and far quicker than the Joker. He didn’t shoot outside as well as the Serbian superstar, but was a much better defender and shot-blocker.

As a defender, he was close to the same level as his idol Bill Russell. As a passing center, no American big man compares. Only 7-3 Lithuanian Hall of Famer Arvydas Sabonis and three-time NBA MVP Jokic are of the same caliber as passing centers.

As a rebounder, he was nearly on par with Chamberlain, Russell and Moses Malone. He perfected the quick outlet pass to start the fast break, often tossing it out to a guard while still on his way down with a defensive rebound.

A high percentage shooter, he could have scored a lot more than he did, but he was too unselfish, taking just 13.1 shots per game in college (and 10 per game in the NBA).

During an unsurpassed career at UCLA he scored 20.3 points a game on 65.6 field goal shooting accuracy, while grabbing 15.7 rebounds and dishing out almost six assists per outing – in just 30 minutes per contest.

His epic 21 for 22 shooting performance in the 1973 NCAA title win over Memphis State is likely the greatest game anyone played in a championship game.

Walton’s 44 points in 33 minutes is still a championship-game record. And he also had two baskets disallowed for offensive goaltending and dunking, which was illegal then. A sprained ankle late in the game and foul trouble kept him from scoring 50.

But really all he cared about was winning. From his last two years of high school to his senior year at UCLA, his teams won 143 straight games.

Only when Notre Dame scored the last 12 points to upset UCLA 71-70 on January 19, 1974 was the record college win streak of 88 games broken. The New York Times printed the story on the front page of the entire paper, so newsworthy was the upset.

Few knew that Walton was playing that game with two broken bones in his lower back suffered two weeks earlier when he was undercut.

He still managed to make 12 of 14 shots, but missed a hurried turnaround banker in the final seconds that would have kept the streak alive. A week later in the rematch, he hit 15 of 17 shots to lead UCLA to a 94-75 revenge win over the Fighting Irish.

But to his dying days, he could still tell you how many years, months and days had passed since the loss at Notre Dame at any time of day.

Years later, Walton said UCLA could and should have run the table to 105 straight and won a third straight NCAA title in an ESPN special called “88 and 1.” The 1973-74 UCLA team, as he noted, was by far the most talented Bruin team he played on.

Perhaps too talented, as coach John Wooden preferred to play only seven or eight men at most, a tough task given the team was loaded with 11 high school All-Americans and eight future pros.

UCLA assistant Denny Crum recruited Walton out of suburban San Diego, telling John Wooden that he was the best prospect he had ever seen. Wooden chastised Crum for making such a bold statement, but when he went to see the big red dominate play, the understated coach admitted to Crum that “he is pretty good, isn’t he?”

Big Bill remains the youngest man to ever play for Team USA in an international competition. As a 17-year old, he missed the last part of his senior season to play in the 1970 World Cup at Yugoslavia.

Unfortunately, his injury problems began in earnest due to his participation as well. Bill had suffered a knee injury and underwent surgery to fix damaged cartilage earlier in high school. But he was growing so fast, the knee had not quite healed correctly when the World Cup beckoned.

He then went into the Team USA training camp under Air Force head coach Hal Fischer, who ran such brutal conditioning practices that he contracted severe knee tendonitis that plagued him the rest of his career.

Years later he still refused to even say Fischer’s name, still hurting, and to add insult to injury, he played little due to the knee trouble. For the next 17 years, Walton wore knee pads when he played.

Before every game and practice in college and for most of the rest of his career, he would warm the aching knees up with heating pads, and afterward ice them down.

Still, his ability and energy were so immense that he managed to win three NCAA Player of the Year awards, capture two undefeated NCAA titles and tournament MOP honors — with record margin of victory averages — and make a third Final Four.

Unfortunately, they lost an epic double overtime semifinal thriller to eventual champion North Carolina State and David Thompson to end their run of seven straight national titles in Bil’s senior season.

Possessing an inquisitive mind, he was also an Academic All-American at UCLA. Anyone who listened to his ESPN broadcasts in recent years might be treated to tangential in-game detours on history, philosophy, nearby rivers and geography, exotic animals, politics, and cycling, among other things – with a little basketball mixed in.

Not surprisingly, he was a hit with the millennial crowd, due to his endless positivity, sense of humor and wide-ranging interests/often hyperbolic rants.

SetNumber: X21496 TK1

He was the first pick in the 1974 NBA draft by Portland. Plagued by injuries in his first two seasons, he was unable to achieve his vast potential early on. Fellow UCLA center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar elbowed rookie Walton in the jaw when unleashing his famed hook, breaking his jaw.

Moth wired shut, the slender vegetarian Walton lost even more weight. But by the 1976-77 season, he was healthy and into weightlifting. A resurgent Walton led Portland to a 4-0 sweep of Jabbar and the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.

After a 10-day layoff, the TrailBlazers fell behind 2-0 in the Finals to the favored 76ers of Julius Erving, Doug Collins and George McGinnis. But Portland roared back to win the next four games and capture the NBA title.

It was the first trip to the playoffs for the expansion Blazers, who remain the youngest team in NBA history to win it all.

The next season they were even better as Bill led Portland to a 50-10 start. The Blazers were a shoo-in to repeat and possibly challenge the 1971-72 Laker title team’s record of 69 wins. But Walton’s congenital foot structure problems ended his regular season.

Without Walton, the Blazers went 8-14 over the last 22 games. Despite playing 58 games, he was still named the regular season MVP, so dominant had he and the team been.

In the rush to defend the title, Bill made the ill-advised decision to come back prematurely for the playoffs. Depending on which side one believes, he was either given or was unaware he was shot up with painkillers in the second round so he could play vs. Seattle and future Celtic teammate Dennis Johnson.

Unable to completely feel his foot pain, in game two he re-broke the foot and never played another game for Portland. His career would never be the same. There was a complete breakdown in trust between he and the Blazer medical staff, and the idealist realized that he could not play for his dream team again.

He sued the Blazers and then left to sign with his hometown San Diego Clippers as a free agent. Years later, he admitted that leaving Portland was the hardest decision of his life.

He missed the entire 1978-79 season. The next year he narrowly missed a CBS Sunday showdown with Larry Bird in late January of 1980 by one game, coming back only a few days late for his long-awaited Clipper debut. Bird tallied 36 points vs. Walton-less San Diego.

Bill came back to help beat Phoenix but played only 14 games that season. His last game that season was a loss to the Lakers, the same Jabbar-led team who would send him into retirement seven years later with a devastating game six defeat in the 1987 Finals.

Walton did not play in a single game over the next TWO seasons and tried a year of la school at Stanford, desperately hoping for a miracle cure so he could play again. With each month his exploits of just a few years earlier seemed a distant memory.

Over four seasons from 1978-82, he played in only 14 games. Doctors told him he would never run or play again. Some advised him his foot might need amputated.

But then a revolutionary doctor named Wagner invented a new foot surgery that Walton was the first guinea pig for, and it worked. He played 33 games for the Clippers in 1982-83, then 55 in 1983-84 when the team moved to Los Angeles.

In 1984-85, he competed in 67 games, but the constant losing and turmoil of playing for the chaotic Donald Sterling-led franchise led him to seek “greener” pastures.

But first the SoCal native turned to long-time friend and Laker GM Jerry West, asking the LA great to acquire him to back up Jabbar. But West reluctantly declined, saying he had seen his damaged foot x-rays.

Photo by Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Walton then called Red Auerbach in Boston, pleading with him to make a deal to get him out of Clipper chaos. Serendipitously, Larry Bird happened to be in Red’s office when the call came through. Red put Bill on hold and asked Bird what he thought about trading for Walton.

Walton had been the only player Bird’s mom said that she ever remembered him idolizing as a high schooler. Bird immediately told Red to “go get that guy.”

Auerbach traded disgruntled forward Cedric Maxwell for Walton. Both sides were unhappy with each other over Max’s perceived lack of dedication to rehabbing an injured knee, which helped cost the Celtics a chance to repeat over the hated Lakers in the 1985 Finals.

But to make the trade happen, first Walton had to forfeit all the money owed to him by Sterling before Donald would grant him the deal he knew Bill desperately wanted. Walton agreed to waive any money owed to him, and the deal was made.

Of course Walton had to pass a physical, which was also a major hurdle. The doctors were dubiously looking over Walton’s x-rays at a Boston hospital, and the consensus was that there was no way he could pass.

The imperious Auerbach burst into the room, smoking his ever-present cigar even in the hospital. He went up to Walton and said “Bill, can you play?”

A determined Walton quietly said “I think so, Red.”

Auerbach then pronounced him fit to play, intimidating the doctors into passing his physical, and the rest is history.

The gamble in trading 1981 Finals MVP Maxwell for the oft-injured Walton turned out to be a match made in basketball heaven for one season. He meshed perfectly with Bird and gave Robert Parish much-needed rest without threatening his starting job.

When former Notre Dame coach Johnny Dee tried hard to recruit Walton to South Bend in 1970, he implored Bill that since he was Irish, Catholic and red-headed, he had to come to the Golden Dome.

But Walton always wanted to play for UCLA after seeing Gail Goodrich lead the Bruins to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1964-65, the first of Wooden’s record 10 championships.

Yet in going to Boston at age 33, he returned to his Irish roots and became an immediate fan favorite.

Walton played in a career-high 80 games for Boston in the magical 1985-86 season. Many hoop historians, myself included, think that is the greatest team ever.

It featured prime Bird, in his third straight MVP season. McHale, the game’s most skilled low post player who had a Walton Portland poster on his Minnesota dorm room wall, emerged as a superstar.

The lineup included Hall of Fame defensive ace guard Dennis Johnson and center Parish, as well as a burgeoning All-Star guard in multi-sport pro athlete Danny Ainge.

Former two-time Kings All-Star Scott Wedman, the best seventh man in the league called by Walton (a bit hyperbolicall) the second-best small forward in the NBA, was buried behind Bird. But Wedman was the best baseline shooter maybe ever, a great pure shooter, smart, and a fine defender.

Three players on that legendary team were NBA Finals MVPs – Bird twice, DJ in 1979 for Seattle, Walton in 1977 for Portland. The Celtics went 67-15 and went 50-1 at home, including 10-0 in the playoffs.

Six players on arguably the smartest and most skilled team ever went on to be head coaches in the NBA – Bird, McHale, Ainge (all three also NBA GMs), Sam Vincent, Rick Carlisle and DJ. Wedman was a CBA head coach and sharpshooting third guard Jerry Sichting was a long-time NBA assistant with McHale.

Boston cruised to 67 wins within a loaded Eastern Conference in a league not yet diluted by the seven expansion teams that were added from 1988-95. Eight of the losses by a sometimes-bored Celtic squad came to sub.-500 teams. Boston went 15-3 in the playoffs, rolling to the title.

They swept the Jordan Bulls 3-0 and Milwaukee 4-0 in the East finals, with a 4-1 series win over Atlanta sandwiched in between. Houston extended the Celtics to six games in the Finals, but it was 3-1 and the outcome was never truly in doubt after Boston won the first two games easily at home.

Only a curious inadvertent late whistle in game three prevented a potential sweep in a 106-104 Boston loss.

Late in a very close game four, Walton came in and made two of the biggest plays of the series. He first grabbed an offensive rebound against the Twin Towers of Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, and canned a huge reverse layup.

Then in the waning moments, he tossed a superb kick-out dish to a spotted-up Bird. This play embodied their synchronicity.

Larry launched a triple that barely touched the net, so perfectly was the shot arched into the center of the hoop off the perfectly-timed pass. The shot clinched game four 106-103, put Boston up 3-1 and essentially decided the series.

Walton and Bird, the best passing center ever to that time and top passing forward ever formed unquestionably the best passing frontcourt duo in NBA history. As such the two basketball savants enjoyed instant, great chemistry.

Bird cut harder without the ball than at any other time in his career when Walton had the ball, knowing Bill would hit him in stride if he had the slightest sliver of an opening. Many of their passing hook-ups are worth looking up on YouTube.

Their lamentably too short combination of supremely high skill, passing ability and hoops IQ was truly a basketball symphony never seen before or since in the NBA.

Continuing the great tradition of Celtic supersubs started by Frank Ramsey and on through John Havlicek and McHale, Walton of course was named Sixth Man of the Year in 1986.

Beyond his solid stats in 19 minutes a game, he infused the business-like team with much-needed infectious energy and enthusiasm. His unselfishness even inspired McHale and Parish to pass well.

The Celtic practices were the best games of their magical ride season, with Walton leading the second unit Green Team against the vaunted five often called the best starting lineup in NBA history.

Much trash talking ensued, with Walton the joyous butt of Celtic jokes over his injuries, politics, vegetarian eating habits and more. Previously Ainge had been the team’s red-headed whipping boy, but now he gladly stepped aside to let Bill take the brunt.

And the 34-year-old redhead, freed from Clipper-land to basketball utopia, loved every minute of it. Along the way, he also played some great basketball that took a great team to an even higher level.

“I just rode the coattails of these two freaks,” said Ainge in a happy Celtic locker room after they blew out the Rockets in game six to win the 16th crown in franchise annals.

Ainge nicknamed McHale Herman Munster and dubbed Walton Mask after the Rocky Dennis character in the popular Cher/Eric Stolz movie of the time.

For weeks after winning the championship, McHale would call Walton and Bill always answered the phone with “headquarters, Boston Celtics world champions.”

The next season, Walton broke his finger in the pre-season trying to block a Parish shot. Relegated to pedaling furiously on a stationary bike while watching practice, Walton re-broke his foot. He only played 10 games in the cursed 1986-87 season.

Boston had already lost top pick Len Bias to a cocaine-induced death right after the draft. McHale, on his way to his best season and the only first team All-NBA forward tandem from the same team ever, broke his foot and played gamely with the injury through a historic 23-game playoff grind.

Walton limped through minimal playoff action, unable to contribute. Waiting for him to return all year cast a pall over the entire campaign, the opposite of the joyous 1985-86 campaign.

Parish sprained both ankles multiple times in the grueling 1987 post-season, which saw Boston sweep the Bulls but then endure consecutive seven-game epic battles with Milwaukee and Detroit over just 26 days.

Wedman missed the season with a heel injury and never played again. Bird grinded his way through a record 1,015 playoff minutes, almost 400 more than any of the healthy and rested Lakers, who faced a tired and beaten up team in the Finals.

For the first time in Bird’s eight seasons, Boston also did not have homecourt advantage in a playoff series, covering 23 series. Think about that. So consistently great were the Bird Celtics that they never failed to have a better or equal record than any opponent they faced from 1980-88, except for the 1987 Finals.

In a “down” injury-plagued year they still won 59 games in the rugged East, but LA won 65 against a much weaker schedule with two-thirds of their games vs. a soft West. Boston went 20-3 that season vs. the West in the regular season, and 39-20 vs the East.

Ainge sprained his knee in game seven vs. the Bucks, missed half the rancorous Piston series and never returned to form. Bird virtually willed Boston to the Finals, but they were running on fumes with little or no bench. Amazingly, they extended LA to six games and almost upset the Lakers.

LA had cruised through a weak West, beating two sub-.500 teams and a 42-40 Warrior team to get to the title round! In the West Finals, they swept a 39-43 Seattle team, then rested and waited for the Celtics to get past the bruising Bad Boy Pistons in perhaps the most physical, dirty series ever.

Sadly, Walton was unable to contribute. When last seen playing on an NBA court June 14, 1987, he could only hobble up court with a sunburn back in his native southern California at the LA Forum in game six. He played 10 minutes and scored two points.

In a recent YouTube post, Jabbar curiously called the 1987 Finals win over a hobbled and barely-used Walton a measure of revenge for the 1977 sweep Bill and Portland put on the Lakers 10 years earlier. Jabbar scored a season-high 32 points and blocked four shots in the clincher, saving his best game for last, so he was obviously motivated.

But to brag about beating a team devastated by injuries, especially Bill, seems a hollow win at best.

In my opinion with rookie Bias and a healthy Walton and Wedman, the 1986-87 Celtics might have gone 75-7 and would have easily repeated.

If not for a suspicious officiating-influenced one-point loss in game 4 of the Finals where Boston blew a 16-point second half lead (LA out-shot the Celts 14-1 at the foul line in the fourth quarter and at least six second-half calls were missed in favor of LA by Earl Strom and Hugh Evans – look it up on youtube), they might have pulled off the grittiest and greatest NBA title in their fabled history.

A teammate on those 1986 Celtics, Rick Carlisle won the NBA crown in 2011 as coach of Dallas, and is the current head coach of the Indiana Pacers. After Bill’s death during the recent Pacer Eastern finals loss to the Celtics he pointed out that the defiant big redhead fought endlessly to squeeze every possible bit of good out of every moment in his life.

The seven-game playoff win streak Boston curently rides into the 2024 Finals is, by the way, their longest such streak since the 1986 post-season.

Carlisle also related that for his first date with his eventual wife during that season, Walton got him backstage passes to a Grateful Dead concert. He gave Rick and his date the passes he and his wife possessed.

Bill Walton came from non-sports-oriented parentage. His dad was a social worker, mom a librarian. They had a Partridge Family-type home life, with music the unifying force and everyone playing some instrument in post-dinner jam sessions.

As a young man, Bill told his dad during a trip in their beat-up car to practice that he was going to win the NBA Finals MVP award and give him the new car that goes along with that honor.

At a stop, Bill’s sports-clueless dad turned around to Bill in the backseat and said, “What’s the NBA?” A little over a decade later, Walton kept his promise after winning the 1977 Finals MVP.

In the title-clinching sixth game he scored 20 points, grabbed 23 rebounds, blocked eight shots and dished out seven assists to nearly compile a quadruple-double. Portland has not won an NBA championship since he left.

Despite their academic and socially aware-oriented upbringing, the athletic talent was there. Bill’s shorter but much brawnier brother Bruce ended up as a lineman on the great Dallas Cowboy NFL teams of the 1970s. And other than bad feet, Bill possessed great quickness, timing, leaping ability, and excellent hand-eye coordination.

After retirement Walton suffered through a bad back and spinal reconstruction so painful that the normally ebullient Bill was so depressed, he contemplated suicide, he admitted in his 2017 “Back From the Dead” book. But once again he came back after getting a new spine.

He suffered numerous broken noses, a broken jaw and several dislocated or broken wrist/fingers. He played the 1986 playoffs with a broken wrist that he simply taped up and hid under tape and wrist bands.

In BFTD, he noted that Kareem was grumpy one day in recent years because he had just undergone an operation on a finger. Walton sympathetically asked, how many surgeries have you had? The often-sullen Kareem answered that it was his first.

Therein, with their opposing attitudes, lies a lot of the difference between the two UCLA centers who were supposed to embody the new Russell (Walton)/Wilt (Jabbar) rivalry to carry the NBA. But due to Bill’s constant injuries, the rivalry sputtered after a promising start.

Just during his 13-year NBA playing career he endured 39 surgeries and missed over half his games. After retiring he underwent many more operations, having his ankles fused and back re-constructed. Yet he maintained an uber-positive, high-energy attitude.

Bird lamented the death of his friend and teammate, just days before his own museum was opened in Terre Haute, Indiana. Had he been healthy, Walton would almost certainly have been there for the opening.

Sensing Bird’s closely-guarded need for affection after a difficult upbringing and the suicide of his father, Walton would often just blurt out “I love Larry Bird,” slightly embarrassing him.

During the 1986 title season when Boston played at Indiana, Bill and Larry drove to French Lick (not far from the Martinsville hometown of the legendary Wooden) and grabbed some dirt off the area where Larry played growing up.

He put this hallowed French Lick dirt in a jar and whenever things went bad that year, would rub some dirt on himself for good luck.

When he got back home to California after the season, Bill took the remaining dirt and stomped it into his own yard, proclaiming it now sacred ground.

Award-winning author Halberstam noted the on/off court contradiction in Walton. “In his personal life he was the explorer, the counter-culture guy. In his basketball life, he was the ultimate orthodox person,” he observed.

In the 2000 ESPN SportsCentury documentary on Bill, Bruce Walton said of his brother’s charmed life that “he has had a lot more highs and a lot more lows than the normal person would ever experience. He doesn’t walk on water, but he knows where all the stones are right below the surface.”

Perhaps Bill’s former rival Jabbar surprisingly put it best in a tweet after the redhead’s death. As a player he called him “fierce…but off the court he was someone who wasn’t happy, unless everyone around him was happy. He was the best of us.”

On and off the court, Bill Walton made everyone better.

You can contact writer Prof. Parquet/Cort Reynolds at [email protected]