LOVERRO: Walton leaves behind incomparable basketball, broadcasting legacy

OPINION:

Former Maryland basketball star Tom McMillen was surprised to hear that Bill Walton had died at the age of 71 from cancer. “I didn’t know he was that sick,” McMillen said. “I would have reached out to him. He was a great human being.”

The link between the two stars goes back to the 1970s, even before their illustrious collegiate careers.

“We were those high school boys that got a lot of publicity,” McMillen said. “Our friendly rivalry started in high school.”

Their college years included a legendary showdown in their senior years, as Maryland opened the 1973-74 season at Pauley Pavilion against Walton and UCLA (the Bruins won 65-64).

Sports Illustrated played up the Walton-McMillen meeting. “It has been, as McMillen says, a ‘nebulous rivalry,’ but a rivalry nonetheless, and it started when the two were precocious basketball lads and high school honor students at Mansfield, Pa. and La Mesa, Calif,” SI wrote. “The best big men in the East and West, back then. Compared and commented on; who was the best? One to Maryland. The other to UCLA. Naturally, fabulous freshmen.

“In the years since, while Walton has come to rule the sport, all McMillen has done is become an All-American on one of the better teams in the land, win an Olympic team berth and an NIT MVP trophy and, off the court, become a Rhodes scholar applicant and a participant in so many government-related activities his teammates call him ’the Senator.’”

McMillen went on to serve three terms in Congress from 1987 to 1993.

“We would run into each other occasionally,” McMillen said. “We always had some discussions politically. I always thought that Bill would have been good at politics. But he had an iconic career.”

Yes, he did — two of them.

Walton is in both the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He won three consecutive national college player of the year awards from 1972 to 1974, leading UCLA to two national championships in 1972 and 1973 and an 88-game win streak. 

For Walton, it was actually a 142-game winning streak over five years that started in his high school years. 

In 1974, his UCLA squad lost to a North Carolina State team led by another legendary college star, David Thompson, 80-77 in double overtime. Walton finished his college career with an 86-4 record.

He was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers with the first pick in the 1974, but we had to wait until 1977 to see the best of Walton, as his first two years were limited by the chronic foot injuries that would hamper him throughout his career. 

In 1977, Walton showed the NBA his greatness while averaging 18.6 points, 14.4 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 3.2 blocks per game, leading Portland to an NBA title.

That team is remembered as a disciplined unit that had mastered the fundamentals of basketball and played the game with a textbook precision that was a joy to watch. You know — the exact opposite of the NBA today. 

And Walton did what he did in those NBA playoffs against Hall of Fame centers Artis Gilmore and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

He was named the MVP of the NBA finals, which prompted the losing coach, the Philadelphia 76ers’ Gene Shue, to declare, “Bill Walton is the best player for a big man who ever played the game of basketball.

Walton the basketball player was, in some ways, like Joe Namath. 

It’s tough to convey the greatness of his game beyond the numbers limited by an injury-diminished career, but some moments stand out no matter how distant they are in the past — 44 points on 21 of 22 field goals, with 13 rebounds, for UCLA in the NCAA title game against Memphis, and the 20 points, 23 rebounds, 8 blocks and 7 assists he had in the Game 6 championship clincher in the 1977 NBA finals against the Julius Erving’s 76ers.

But, like Namath, you really had to see Walton in action to appreciate that he was one of the top five centers to ever play the game. You just had to be there.

Fortunately, most of us were there for Walton’s second act — the colorful, warm basketball analyst who preached round ball, tie-dyed T-shirt love. 

It was George Foreman-like, from angry and withdrawn to friendly and sociable, a Grateful Dead ambassador. He underwent this change despite nearly 40 operations for foot and back ailments that left him in pain throughout much of his life.

The early Walton was combative and difficult, a child of the 1960s who was arrested at protests, and hung out with radicals — he was close to Jack Scott, the activist who helped hide Patty Hearst and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, who were on the run as wanted terrorists. He constantly battled with his Hall of Fame UCLA coach, John Wooden.

“He told me after his Player of the Year and national championship season I didn’t have the right to have him wear his hair shorter,” Wooden said in one of his many Walton tales. “I said that’s right, but I have the right to determine who plays, and we are going to miss you.”

Yet later Walton would often profess his love for his former coach and call Wooden twice a week.

Walton also had a stutter that held him back until he met Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman, who gave Walton some advice and exercises. 

“Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better,” he wrote in an essay for The Stuttering Foundation.

Turns out it changed many other lives as well, because it gave all of us the gift of Bill Walton’s soul.

⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.