Bill Walton’s Unforgettable Basketball Journey | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Bill Walton’s Unforgettable Basketball Journey | The Bill Simmons Podcast

so I spent three years writing my basketball book which got published in October of 2009 and for the epilog I wanted to drive down to San Diego and talk to Bill Walton because a big part of the book was about the secret of basketball how it wasn’t about basketball how it was about being selfless being a good teammate about understanding your place in the hierarchy of a team about great players who can make other players better um Bill Walton embodied so much of it that I felt like I had to go see him and there was this extra that of all the great players ever he was the one guy who had that gift and wasn’t really able to use it because he kept getting hurt so I drove to San Diego and I’m just going to read you the first two paragraphs of the epilog William Theodore Walton the thir lives in a sprawling house filled with hundreds of books pictures momentos artifacts and everything else that should definitely be in Bill Walton’s house turn left and you might see a Vietnam book next to a Hunters Thompson book turn right you might see a photo of Bill and Bob Dylan hanging next to a picture of Bill and John Wooden a lifelong resident of the most beautiful city in America Walton owns a Spanish style home that makes you think I am definitely undoubtedly in San Diego right now the house features a basketball half court in a pool as well as his lovely wife Lori two pooches named Annie and Shasta and a black cat named charcoal that’s right a black cat this blows me away Bill Walton seems like the last guy who should tempt fate with a black cat instead of being mentioned the same breath with Russell and Wilt and K dream he’s remembered for bad luck in what could have been his body continues to pay for an injury Riddle career that ended 22 years ago only recently could he start moving around after major back surgery left him bedridden for months his feet betrayed him so egregiously that within 10 minutes of sitting down with him I glanced at his swollen scarred almost unrecognizable right foot become distracted and lose my train of thought Walton was blessed with a gift and cursed with the body that couldn’t handle that gift the curse trumped the gift one of the few players who understood the secret completely and totally poor well and never had an extended chance to harvest it when I think back to that day it’s 15 years ago almost almost to the month I keep thinking about his foot because you looked at it and it just it was like watching it it was like looking at a suitcase that had you know stickers from where everybody went and it just had all these scarves that just kind of captured how awful his journey was just trying to stay in the court I think he had probably 40 foot surgeries and back surgeries and his body just couldn’t hold up uh but he was at peace with it by the time I saw him play and and I have a lot more in that I want to go backwards though because everyone talked about what an amazing human being he was and what an ambassador he was for basketball but there was some basic basic basketball stuff I just wanted to rip through really quick about Walton because I feel like he was that important he’s one of the greatest college basketball players ever by any calculation that’s the first thing three Player of the Year Awards two titles they had an 88 game winning streak at UCLA in the 72 final four 57 points 41 rebounds in the two games in 73 in the championship game against Memphis best game ever 21 for 22 field goal Jesus 44 points 13 rebounds and if you’re going to talk about who are the greatest college basketball players of all time Lou alander Bill Walton mavage Oscar like whatever list you want to make Al Sender and walon have to be the first two on it and that’s that so you got comes in the league he’s the first pick in the draft for Portland and can’t really stay healthy there for a couple years and then all a sudden it happens March 1977 through February 78 the Blazers go 70 and 15 including the 1977 playoffs and Walton’s just crushing in the playoffs he’s like 18 and 16 and six assists three plus blocks a game um he beats artist Gilmore David Thompson Kem Abdul Jabor and Dr J in the finals and then this is the third thing in the finals he has one of the 10 greatest closing games in the history of the finals pettit’s game six and 57 Russell’s game seven and 62 Jordan’s game six and 98 Frasier’s game seven and 70 Magic’s game 6 and 80 Birds game 6 and 86 Duncan game 6-03 LeBron ‘s game seven and 16 Giannis is 50p pointer in 21 and then Bill Walton 20 points 23 rebounds eight assists seven blocks they win the game in the final play he rips off his jersey celebrates short list with the Delirious Portland fans there’s maybe it’s the greatest of all the closing games I gotta say when you throw in the crowd coming in and just mobbing him it’s pretty great another thing with him he’s the greatest passing Center ever until yokin shows up so if you’re going to do Mount Passmore it’s Bill Russell sabonis yic and Bill Walton uh if you’re going to do most fun teammates of all time I don’t know how long you want your list to be but bird and magic and Bill Walton and yic have to be probably the first four people mention so there’s that um the fifth thing as he’s doing all this he’s one of the great off cour characters in the history of the league he’s got the long hair with the ponytail he’s got the beard he’s doing 70s protest stuff in a league that for the most part wanted no part of the stuff he’s not just protested Vietnam he’s sticking up for black players he’s sticking up for civil rights like he is a true 70s radical uh that there wasn’t only no other NBA player like this in the 70s there are barely any athletes like this in the 70s uh because you know Ali Brown Kareem all those guys who in the 60s made such an impact by the 70s it’s starting to fade a little bit and Walton’s keeping it going he’s also uh you know pot smoker he’s a vegan rides his bike everywhere Brett musberger Nick nicknames of the Mountain Man uh he had the stuttering problem back then that somehow not only did he over overcome he became an eventual broadcaster but he was just a presence you know he’s 7 foot two like legitimately I know he’s listed at 611 but he was a legitimate 7 foot2 long crazy hair uh played unlike anyone El in the league was the only person who made Kareem seem smaller so on top of that he had this unabashed love for John Wooden and for good basketball he had this crazy spiritual connection with the Grateful Dead which lasted all the way through when he played then afterwards and I think he was still showing up for shows even in the last year in the 90s he ends up doing broadcasting and becomes a character that way this was the era where the color guy really was never that interesting in basketball and then Walton comes in he’s like killing Carl Malone he’s killing coaches he’s doing stuff like almost from a fans perspective but he had you know the gravitas to do it because he was Bill Walton and he would have these uh fun podcast interviews and all these different things you saw a lot of that in the 30 for30 but he was a true true true off thecore character on top of being such a great player uh the six thing he’s the best guy in one of the four best teams I ever saw in person so I saw them in December 77 they played in Boston I just turned eight years old and for me to remember a random Celtics game from December 77 means that it had to have left an impact on me because the Celtics suck that year those havs last year they were they were uh not a playoff team Portland shows up Kicks the crap out of us they reach a level that i’ had never seen in person before where they’re just we would miss while them get the rebound everybody would take off and that’s just how it went they felt unbeatable we missed they scored we missed they scored they felt like watching machine we left the garden I remember my dad and I just like oh my God we we would have never have a chance to get that team and as I got older I thought the score was like 160 to 70 uh the score was actually 117 to 86 but I wrote this when I wrote my book and I still feel this way the 86 Celtics the 96 bulls and that 77 Blazers are the three best teams I’ve ever seen in person and since I wrote the book I would add the 2017 Warriors so it’ be the those four teams I never got to see the 2013 heat during the streak because I was doing TV that year but I I wish I had seen them because I feel like they would have been in there but those are my four 86 SS 96 Bulls 77 Blazers 2017 Warriors just for me seeing them in person the seven thing about Walton his injuries and his loss of relevance from 1978 to 1985 was one of the most damaging things that ever happened in the NBA just it’s that simple it starts with he gets hurt in February they misdiagnose it he has a stress fracture which they don’t really realize he ends up coming back for the playoffs they think he has a sore foot they shoot his foot up he makes it way worse we end up in a malpractice situation where he sues the team he misses the whole next season ends up signing with the Clippers and that’s a disaster he misses three full seasons from the moment that injury happens he plays 47 games in five years at one point 47 games total uh for the Clippers he played less than I think 175 games and just gets removed from the league for seven years basically because even when he was playing on the Clippers and he had a couple years he played like 55 games 65 games but even on the Clippers like it’s not like anybody was watching them they weren in’t a playoff team so not only did we lose Walton so think about like if we just lost yage four years ago he’s just gone what’s the league like uh we lose a hope Blazers Lakers and Walton Kareem rivalry just never happens we have in the 77 playoffs he beats Kareem then it just never happens again we lose Walton versus Moses we lose Walton playing against the bird Celtics we lose Walton from a stretch of the NBA that was really dangerous the 78 playoffs 79 playoffs that whole season the cocaine era setting it in uh the best players in the league are Dr J and Kareem they’re not on TV that much they really kind of need Walton he’s one of of the most famous guys in the league and his team is the most fun team to watch and it’s just gone and right around then they start taped delaying games they’re not showing games at all they don’t know which stars to push because they had David Thompson they had ice they had gerin like they had good players but for whatever reason Walton um because of that 77 finals it felt like he was becoming the face of the league and they he’s just gone and they weren’t really able to replace it until bird of magic showed up basketball dies in San Diego is another thing that happened and then I wrote at the time you can’t overstate how damaging those lost walers were for anyone who truly cared about basketball from a comedy standpoint it would be like Eddie Murphy releasing 48 hours and Trading Places disappearing for the next eight years coming back releasing B’s cop and then disappearing for good that’s what it was like I mean you’re talking you we should have had 1100 games from him plus 150 playoff games and we end up with less than 500 regular season games and you know less than the playoff games so um so there’s that number eight he was the focal point of the best sports book of all time by David howbert Stam it’s called breaks of the game it is a 362 page snapshot of the NBA read as it’s shifting from this downshot in error it was having to a pretty lucrative error it covers the 7980 season but it goes backwards it’s through Portland through the prism of this team that really meant something that that had a chance to be truly great and then within two years Walton’s gone injuries money has ruined the team people are getting traded and uh it’s about a loss of loyalty it’s about bigger business Stakes it’s about the rise of the personal brand smarter media coverage trusting your doctors it’s just an amazing book and an amazing character study I wrote about it for page 220 years ago I read that book so many times I felt like the guys in the book were my friends including Bill wton uh but one of my favorite parts of the but the book was Bobby Knight calls Stu Inman the guy who built the team and this was right after W Walton bolted for San Diego and Knight was so crushed because he loved the Blazers he felt like like Walton’s Blazers teams were like exactly the kind of basketball he wanted in life and he asked do andman is there any way to keep a perfect team together can it be done anymore and that’s been The crucial question of following basketball for the last 50 years starting with the 77 Blazers can you build a perfect team can you keep the team together the answer is probably no I mean even like we had the 2017 warriors were which were about as perfect of an offensive team as you can ever build and within two years Katie’s leaving you know we had Jordan and the Bulls and Jordan after three titles goes to play baseball comes back three more titles that falls apart um injuries money jealousy it’s just too freaking hard and it really starts with that 77 Blazers team the nin thing he becomes the most overqualified uh six-man of all time he goes to the Celtics they trade Cedric Maxwell for him I think they traded a pick two goes to the 1986 Celtics Birds Apex they go 82 and 18 they go 50-1 at home and miraculously Bill Walton plays 80 games in 16 playoff games he plays 96 games this is a guy who did not play play 500 regular season games in his career uh his previous career I was 67 he played 19 minutes a game he was 87 and two and brought just something to that team that I can’t even describe he clicked with bird in a way that um was almost like hard to believe as you were watching it they were just immediately on the same Wi-Fi link and uh they would start mess around with each other during games and they had the same play over and over again where bird would throw it to Walton and then he would kind of run toward Walton almost like using Walton as a pick and either pretend to Dart out for three or he would just cut to the basket and Walton would wait and just whip it over his head and find him but uh watching those guys experiment together was about as happy as I’ve ever been as a basketball fan uh the team had so much size the team really loved each other and pulled for each other there was no jealousy at all and for Walton this guy who had seemed like you know was this huge wh if in so many different ways and then basketball what makes him happy again he fits in that team and and plays for what seems to be the greatest team ever at the time and he loved Larry Bird the most there’s this great moment you can find it on YouTube game four Eastern Conference Finals 86 they’re playing in Milwaukee and they’re getting revenge against Milwaukee because Milwaukee swept them three years earlier and bird ball get swung around it’s that it’s literally the last couple seconds of the game and bird says screw it and just shoots a three at the buzzer and it’s an fu3 exclamation point goes in and you see Walton on the court he raises his arms he’s so pumped uh just like just can’t believe bird took the shot and made it and CBS follows them into the locker room and they’re getting the celebration and people are like yeah we did it and then Walton comes in last he’s like Larry Bird Larry Bird it’s just saying Larry Bird over and over and over again he was so delighted by bird uh but he was such a big part of that team and I can’t think of another six man quite like him that could come in swing games where you weren’t even sure maybe he should just be in crunch time in every game he was that good um and he would come in huge huge huge body uh always had the ball over his head fundamentally he was so good he get these rebounds just keep the ball over his head Nobody Does this anymore or if they do it you notice it uh he was always always ready to make a play at all times which I think is a weird thing to pray somebody for but there’s so many guys now get the ball like what am I gonna do what am I GNA do Walton always knew what he was going to do uh I feel like his tape should be shown to high school centers for the rest of Eternity last thing I think Walton was one of 15 or 16 players who guaranteed you a title if he was healthy and here’s what I mean by that because when I was figuring out the pyramid for my book the question for me trying to do the rankings is you know all due respect to David Robinson but would you rather have 14 years of David Robinson or like three years of Bill Walton because if I have three years of Bill Walton and I could put the right team around him a good rebounder next to him and a couple Shooters and some quick guards am I winning the title like I probably am and if if I want a great player I want them because I want to win a title it’s not I just don’t want to be good for a decade and a half I want to win the title not that many players guaranteed you a title like when I did this list in my book it was Jordan Bird magic Russell Hakeem Kareem Duncan Shaq Moses Wilt and mik in the 50s that was the whole list since then Kobe LeBron yage Curry maybe honest depends how you feel about 2021 and all the stuff that happened this year it was a pretty weird year I’m not positive yanis guarantees you a title but he’s couldn’t be closer and then Luca would be the last one maybe that’s on that list but that’s how good Walton was that’s why um even though he didn’t play that that long we were talking about him for years and decades after and then you know the really special piece was he brought as much joy and appreciation and wisdom to his post playing career as I think any great player ever so when I drove to San Diego to see him and I’m thinking of the premise The Secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball and I lay it out for him I have the whole Isaiah story um about how Isaiah realized what the secret was that I have my book I have a few other examples I give him all my case basically for the secret and he listed to me and this is what he said it’s not a secret as much as a choice look at the forces fighting against that choice look at the forces pushing you to make the other choice the wrong choice it’s all about you it’s all about material Acquisitions physical gratification stats and highlights everywhere you go you’re bombarded with the opposite message of what really matters and you wouldn’t even know otherwise unless you played with the right player right coach the wooden the arbs the ramies the Russell the birds how many people get that lucky Kobe was blessed to have Phil and eventually realized that with a truly great coach it’s not about a diagram it’s not about a play it’s not about a practice it’s the course of time over history it’s the impact a coach has on the lives around him that’s what Phil has done for Kobe the history of life is that most people figure it out most of the time it’s too late that’s the real frustrating part the squandered opportunities that you can’t get back Kobe figured it out it took a while but he figured it out now he says all this this was right after the 2009 finals and one of the things I was grappling with my book was Kobe just won the finals I wouldn’t say Kobe is on the you know first sentence of people I would say it was a big secret guy you know he W he was a new generation of player where it was like he’s gonna get his and you had to fit everyone around him but you could still win a title that way and it took me a while to to figure out the back type of basketball that I cared about versus the type of basketball that Kobe was good at I couldn’t reconcile the two I was like that whatever Kobe is doing on this Lakers team it feels opposite to the stuff I’m I’m I’m basically touting in this book so what does that mean for the book and that was what I went to Walton with and this is what Walton said back Kobe only wants to win it doesn’t matter what your motivation is or that your game or your style is different or that it’s not perceived to be right or acceptable we have seen an entire spectrum of things for him this decade and right now he’s really really good look you want him to be perfect for you this comes back to your choice Who Your Heroes are you chose to value a certain type of player over anyone else he has the right to make his choice too so that’s what Bill Walton said and he was exactly right Kobe was choosing to play a certain way and it worked got to hand it to him but that wasn’t the best thing I took away from from my time with Walton because we were talking about not just the secret of basketball but when it becomes truly special when we talk about Larry Bird and and this is what he said it all starts with the flow throw the performance aspect and that’s when you really have something Larry played with passion persistence and purpose there was meaning to his performances same for Bob Dylan Neil Young Jerry Garcia Jordan magic it was important to them which made it important to us the personality of the lead player brings with it all kinds of responsibilities not just a job it’s a way of life with Larry people would buy tickets where they couldn’t even see the game obstructed seats just to be there people just wanted to be in the arena and feel that Golden Glow he was incomparable he could do things that nobody else could even think of doing and he would do them in the biggest moments on the grandest stages that’s control of the flow flow plus meaning equals performance so that’s what Bill Walton said I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever heard anybody say at least to me and I think he’s right flow plus man equals performance and the and the crazy thing about it was nobody understood that as a player more than Bill Walton because if you saw him at his peak in 77 there was flow and there was meaning and there was performance and there was a connection with his teammates that was unlike anything else that was happening and it got taken away from him and a lot of times that can break somebody and it didn’t break him he was able to rise above it and he led a great life and affected a lot of people to the end he had flow and he had meaning and he had performance so rip Bill Walton he died this week at 71 years old we’re going to miss him the sport of basketball’s going to miss him

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons talks about Bill Walton’s incredible career and life.

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