Bill Walton, an NBA Hall of Fame center who got his start at UCLA before winning NBA championships with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Boston Celtics, has died.
Walton, 71, passed away after “a prolonged battle with cancer,” the NBA said in a statement Monday.
RIP. 🙏🏻 😢
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Al Franken’s podcast with Bill Walton…..
Charles Barkley on the passing of Bill Walton….
“When I got that news yesterday, it hurt," Barkley said pregame. "Great at basketball, great in life, great as a broadcaster — but just a great person. I've never seen a person who was more joyful to be around... The world is not as good of a place as it was yesterday. The world was better for having Bill Walton in it.”
Walton just reminded me of the type of person who led a good life and it seemed to rub off on others. RIP.
Walton had every reason to be very bitter about how things turned out for him. He did make the top 75 team in NBA history a few years ago, but he would have likely been a top 10 player all-time had it not been for the injuries. He only played 468 total regular season games. He had something like 30 surgeries by the time he was done playing. He said in interviews he had considered suicide at one point because the pain was constant and intense. But instead of succumbing to that and being bitter, he embraced everything about life. He was intelligent, eccentric, would go off on insane tangents during broadcasts, but he seemed to have this ability to make everyone around him laugh and feel better about themselves.
When he was healthy, he was an incredible player to watch. It's hard to come up with a modern-day comparison to what he was as a player, but he was kind-of like Jokic in terms of the court vision and basketball IQ for a 7 footer. Walton was one of the first 7 footers to get triple doubles. But you can't compare him to Jokic very well because Walton wasn't a great shooter, and Jokic can't really play defense. A healthy Bill Walton was an elite defender.
I think he is the only player to win an MVP, a Finals MVP, and 6th man of the year. He was also was first-team All-NBA defense twice.
Back From The Dead is a great read. The book By Jack Scott (Patty Hearst chauffeur, protector and collaborator) is also. Bill let Scott and his wife hide out in his Portland house at the end of the Hearst saga.
Those were the days.
Kareem writing at length about his fellow Bruin:
