William Theodore "Bill" Walton III is an American retired basketball player and television sportscaster.
Walton achieved superstardom playing for John Wooden's powerhouse UCLA Bruins in the early
'70s, winning three successive College Player of the Year Awards, while leading the Bruins
to two Division I national titles. He then went on to have a prominent career in the
National Basketball Association where he was a league Most Valuable Player and won two
NBA championships. His professional career was significantly hampered by multiple foot
injuries. Walton was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on May 10,
1993 and the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame that same year. He is the father of former professional
basketball player Luke Walton.
Early life and college career
Walton was born in La Mesa, California, the son of Gloria Anne and William Theodore "Ted"
Walton. His listed adult playing height was 6 feet 11 inches; it has been reported that
Walton was actually taller, but did not like being categorized as a seven-footer.
He played high school basketball at Helix High School. At age 17, Walton played for
the United States men's national basketball team at the 1970 FIBA World Championship.
He played college basketball for John Wooden at the University of California, Los Angeles
from 1971 to 1974, winning the national title in 1972 over Florida State and again in 1973
with an 87–66 win over Memphis State in which Walton made an impressive 21 of 22 field
goal attempts and scored 44 points, representing more than half his team's total points.
The Walton-led 1971–72 UCLA basketball team had a record of 30–0, in the process winning
its games by an average margin of more than 30 points. He was the backbone of two consecutive
30–0 seasons and was also part of UCLA's NCAA men's basketball record 88-game winning
streak. The UCLA streak contributed to a personal winning streak that lasted almost five years,
in which Walton's high school, UCLA freshman, and UCLA varsity teams did not lose a game
from the middle of his junior year of high school to the middle of his senior year in
college. Walton was the 1973 recipient of the James
E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Walton also received
the USBWA College Player of the Year and Naismith College Player of the Year as the top college
basketball player in the country three years in a row while attending UCLA, at the same
time earning Academic All-American honors three times. Some college basketball historians
rate Walton as the greatest who ever played the game at the college level. In Walton's
senior year during the 1973–74 season, the school's 88-game winning streak ended with
a 71–70 loss to Notre Dame. During the same season, UCLA's record seven consecutive national
titles was broken when North Carolina State defeated the Bruins 80–77 in double overtime
in the NCAA semi-finals. With Walton's graduation in 1974 and legendary Bruin coach John Wooden's
retirement after UCLA's 1975 national title, the unprecedented UCLA dynasty came to an
end. Prior to joining the varsity team, Walton,
along with Greg Lee and Keith Wilkes, was a member of the 20–0 UCLA Frosh team.
NBA career Portland Trail Blazers
On leaving college, Walton was drafted by the San Diego Conquistadors of the American
Basketball Association and also taken as the number one overall by the Portland Trail Blazers
in the 1974 NBA Draft and was hailed as the savior of the Portland franchise. He signed
with the Trail Blazers but his first two seasons were marred by injury and the Blazers missed
the playoffs both years. It was not until the 1976–77 season that he was healthy enough
to play 65 games and, spurred by new head coach Jack Ramsay, the Trail Blazers became
the Cinderella team of the NBA. Walton led the NBA in both rebounds per game and blocked
shots per game that season, and he was selected to the NBA All-Star Game, but did not participate
due to an injury. Walton was named to the NBA's First All-Defensive Team and the All-NBA
Second Team for his regular season accomplishments. In the postseason, Walton led Portland to
a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals and went on to help the Trail Blazers
to the NBA title over the favored Philadelphia 76ers despite losing the first two games of
the series. Walton was named the Finals MVP. The following year, the Blazers won 50 of
their first 60 games before Walton suffered a broken foot in what turned out to be the
first in a string of foot and ankle injuries that cut short his career. He nonetheless
won the league MVP that season and the Sporting News NBA MVP, as well. He played in his only
All-Star Game in 1978 and was named to both the NBA's First All-Defensive Team and the
All-NBA First Team. Walton returned to action for the playoffs, but was reinjured in the
second game of a series against the Seattle SuperSonics. Without Walton to lead them,
Portland lost the series to Seattle in six games. As it turned out, Walton would never
play for the Trail Blazers again. During the offseason, Walton demanded to be traded, citing
unethical and incompetent treatment of his and other players' injuries by the Blazers'
front office. He did not get his wish and sat out the 1978–79 season in protest, signing
with the San Diego Clippers when he became a free agent in 1979.
Later career Walton spent more time on the disabled list
than on the court with his hometown San Diego Clippers. He only played 14 games for the
Clippers during the 1979-80 season before missing all of the next two seasons, undergoing
several reconstructive surgeries on his injured foot. After going through extensive rehabilitation,
Walton's foot began to improve; after playing only 14 games from 1979–82, he played 33
games in 1982-83, 55 games in 1983-84, and a then-career high 67 in 1984-85. After the
1984–85 campaign, Walton called on two of the league's premier teams, the Boston Celtics
and the Los Angeles Lakers. After several players on the Celtics said they liked the
idea of having Walton as a teammate backing up Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, Red Auerbach
made the deal happen. One anecdote that particularly illustrates Walton's decision to choose the
Celtics over the Lakers involves Larry Bird, who happened to be in Auerbach's office when
Walton called. Bird said that if Walton felt healthy enough to play that it was good enough
for him, as opposed to Lakers GM Jerry West, who was hedging his interest in Walton pending
a doctor's report. Boston acquired Walton by sending popular forward Cedric Maxwell
to the Clippers along with a first-round draft pick. Providing a reliable backup to McHale
and Parish, Walton played in a career-high 80 games and received the NBA Sixth Man Award
that season en route to the NBA Championship, becoming the only player to have ever won
an NBA Finals MVP, Sixth Man Award, and regular season MVP.
Walton injured himself again the following season, but returned for the 1987 playoffs.
He spent the 1987–88 season on the injured list. He attempted a comeback in February
1990, but injury intervened and he retired from the game. His ankle problems became so
severe years later that he had both his ankles surgically fused. His saga of injury and failed
rehabs was connected to the use of painkillers by the doctor who was assigned to his case.
Walton has said repeatedly in his broadcasts that he is just as much to blame for taking
the medication as the doctor was for giving it to him. In a June 8, 2010 interview on
The Dan Patrick Show, Walton admitted to contemplating suicide for a time due to the constant pain
resulting from injuries sustained during his NBA career. Walton's injuries, along with
his 1978–1979 year-long protest, gave him an unpleasant, if not odd, record of missing
the most games during an NBA playing career, when taking into account the number of years
he was officially listed as a player on a team roster.
Walton was inducted into both the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Oregon Sports Hall of
Fame in 1993. Walton also had his number 32 retired by the Blazers in 1989. His number
32 was also retired by UCLA, in a joint ceremony with fellow basketball legend, number 33,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He is also enshrined in the UCLA Hall of Fame. In 1996, he was
named as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players of all time. He was added to the San Diego
Hall of Champions in 1990. Awards and honors
2× NBA champion NBA Finals MVP
NBA Most Valuable Player 2× NBA All-Star
All-NBA First Team All-NBA Second Team
2× NBA All-Defensive First Team NBA Sixth Man of the Year
NBA 50th Anniversary Team No. 32 retired by Portland Trail Blazers
2× NCAA champion 2× NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player
3× Naismith College Player of the Year 3× USBWA Player of the Year
3× Adolph Rupp Trophy 2× Helms Foundation College Player of the
Year 3× Sporting News College Player of the Year
2× AP College Player of the Year 3× Consensus first team All-American
No. 32 retired by UCLA Broadcasting
After his retirement as a player, Walton overcame a stuttering problem to become a successful
and controversial NBA color commentator for NBC, the Los Angeles Clippers and ABC/ESPN.
After nineteen years working in broadcasting, he left ESPN in November 2009, as the result
of back problems dating back to an injury suffered while playing at UCLA. Following
surgery on his back, Walton returned to broadcasting as a part-time commentator for the Sacramento
Kings for 2010-11 and 2011-12. In July 2012, ESPN and the Pac-12 Network
announced that he would return to broadcasting as a game analyst for Pac-12 basketball coverage,
starting with the 2012-13 season. Walton's trademark catchphrases have included:
"That's a terrible call! Terrible!" "Where in the world is [x]?"
"What is a foul?" "Dial a violation."
"He couldn't even inbound the ball!" "Throw it down, big man! Throw it down!"
In addition, his commentary has been noted for his frequent use of hyperbole. Walton
typically was paired with Steve "Snapper" Jones for national NBA games because he and
Jones had a point-counterpoint banter during games. Despite their frequent on-air argumentative
banter they are actually good friends, as was shown in Walton's short lived 2003 TV
series "Bill Walton's Long Strange Trip." Personal life
Walton currently resides in his hometown of San Diego with his wife Lori. He and his first
wife, Susie, had four sons: Adam, Nathan, Luke, and Chris. Luke played from 2003 to
2012 for the Los Angeles Lakers, won both the 2009 and 2010 NBA Finals, making Bill
and Luke the first father-son pair to have both won multiple NBA championships. Another
of Walton's sons, Chris, played for San Diego State. Nate, his middle son, played basketball
at Princeton but then entered the corporate world and earned his MBA from Stanford University's
Graduate School of Business. Nate was on the ballot for the 2003 California Recall Election,
receiving 1,697 votes. Walton's other son, Adam, also played NCAA basketball at Louisiana
State University. Walton is a well-known fan of the Grateful
Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young, Phish, and Bob Dylan. He attended more than 650 Grateful
Dead concerts, including traveling with the band to Egypt for its famous 1978 performance
before the Pyramids, quotes Dead lyrics in TV and radio interviews. To fellow Deadheads,
Walton is fondly known as "Grateful Red" and the "Big Red Deadhead" and "World's Tallest
Deadhead". In the video for "Touch of Grey", Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart is wearing
a Celtics jacket that was given to him by Walton. In 2001, Bill Walton was inducted
into The Grateful Dead Hall of Honor. Walton expounds upon his music interests on
his own satellite radio show, One More Saturday Night, heard during late prime time on Sirius
Radio's Jam On and XM Radio's Grateful Dead channel. Walton has stated in his online introduction
to his radio show column that he enjoys going to concerts alone because then he has fewer
things in between him and reaching the omega point that all concert goers seek at shows.
Walton still has a committed relationship with the Celtics, if not professionally, as
a fan. Despite the area where he grew up, and the team his son Luke played for, Walton
is careful to point out, "Even though I grew up in the heart of Laker country, the Celtics
were always MY team". He keeps a picture of the floor of the old Boston Garden in his
kitchen. Walton joined the Celtics broadcast crew for a West Coast road trip in 2011.
In 1990, Walton was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall
of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface.
In popular culture Walton has cameo appearances in the films
88 and 1, Celtic Pride, Little Nicky and Semi-Pro, and appeared as Sven the Wise in the 2011
Capital One Visigoth SportsNet commercials. He is also mentioned by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
in the 1980 comedy Airplane! Bill Walton is a playable character in the
video games NBA Street Vol. 2, NBA Street V3, NBA 2K12, NBA 2K13, and NBA Jam: On Fire
Edition, and lent his voice to NBA 2K5 and NBA Shootout 2004.
See also List of National Basketball Association season
rebounding leaders Further reading
Heisler, Mark. Giants: The 25 Greatest Centers of All Time. Chicago: Triumph Books. ISBN 1-57243-577-1.
References
External links Bill Walton's official site
Bill Walton's Historical Profile on NBA.com Hoopedia bio
Bill Walton commentary on Pete Maravich on YouTube
Bill Walton statistics 1972–74 Oscar Robertson Trophy USBWA College
Player of the Year