The night of November 10, 1992, Bill Walton — raconteur, retired basketball star and renowned Deadhead (not necessarily in that order) — gave an address in Franklin & Marshall College’s Hensel Hall (now the Barshinger Center). It was followed by a question-and-answer session, which given Walton’s free-wheeling ways was bound to veer off the tracks.
It did.
A young girl, accompanied by her father, stood and asked what advice Walton would offer an aspiring player like herself.
“Shoot every time you get it,” he told her.
Wait … what?
“All the greatest passers in the game are the greatest scorers,” he continued, a ludicrous assertion.
He then changed course slightly, making a point about daring to be great: “Unless you take a chance and try it, it will never happen for you. Don’t stand around and let other people do it. Do it yourself. You’re going to make a million mistakes, but that’s how you get good.”
That part, at least, was fine. But shoot every time you get it? C’mon. I was there that night, and it has left me wondering two things, all these years later:
- Whatever became of that girl. Did she in fact become an unrepentant gunner? Or did someone eventually steer her straight? (The regret here is that I didn’t get her name. She and her dad were seated a row or two in front of me, maybe 20 feet to my left, but I never approached them. Mea culpa.)
- Whether anything Walton says (or writes) should be taken seriously.
He was at that time just embarking on a media career, one that continues to this day. He is currently an analyst on ESPN’s coverage of Pac-12 basketball games, and pops up on other platforms as well. At all times he seems to be playing a character, aiming for the outlandish. On Saturday, for instance, he appeared on College GameDay ahead of a football game pitting his alma mater, UCLA, against Oregon.
“Have you ever seen a bear fight a duck?” he asked, drawing the obligatory guffaws from his fellow commentators.
(Your final score: Oregon 34, UCLA 31.)
Back in July, Walton appeared on The Press Box podcast, ostensibly to discuss “The Breaks of the Game,” the 1981 book written by the late David Halberstam about the NBA in general and Walton’s Portland Trail Blazers in particular. To this day it remains one of the best pro basketball books ever composed.
Host Bryan Curtis asked Walton a single question — one question! — and Walton prattled on for 45 minutes. (Also, when the rambling one-hour, five-minute podcast reached its conclusion, Walton said, “I hope you got something you can use there.”)
Five years ago, Walton wrote a book entitled “Back From the Dead,” which included a particularly amusing anecdote about John Wooden, UCLA’s late, legendary coach. According to Walton, Wooden had a lucky penny placed in a corner of the Bruins’ locker room before giving his preseason speech every year, then pretended to find it, a supposed portent of things to come. Also according to Walton, he decided to steal the penny before his senior season (1973-74), leaving a stunned Wooden empty-handed. That also happened to be the year UCLA lost in the national semifinals to an N.C. State team led by the incomparable David Thompson — Google him, kids — after winning titles the two previous seasons. (That was part of a run that saw the Bruins capture 10 in 12 years under Wooden.)
So should we believe that? Should we believe Walton was as close to Halberstam as he told Curtis? Should we believe anything Walton says?
I tend to wonder, having witnessed what occurred in Hensel Hall in 1992. Everything he puts out there seems so contrived. Everything seems designed to carry maximum shock value. Not gonna lie — I often find his shtick amusing, but I know of others who find it somewhat less so. Whatever the case, it’s important to take it for what it is, and understand he ain’t exactly Edward R. Murrow, reporting from London during the Blitz.
We can, at least, trust what Walton did as a player, though the asterisk was always his health. He was a three-time College Player of the Year, and in his third season with Portland (1976-77) led the Blazers to their lone NBA championship to date, beating the Sixers in the Finals. He was also MVP the following year, which saw Portland open 50-10.
Then his foot problems began. He played all of 49 minutes in the playoffs that year, then missed all but 14 games over the next four seasons. He told me before that long-ago address at F&M that he underwent 30 surgical procedures during his career, and well, that at least sounds like it could be true.
He would later emerge as the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year on Boston’s 1985-86 championship team, but his career ended with a 10-game whimper in ‘86-87. Of the 1,066 possible regular-season games in which he might have appeared over 13 seasons, he played in just 468. Such was his impact that he was nonetheless voted one of the 50 greatest players of all time when the league celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996, and last week was revealed to be among the 75 greatest, now that the 75th anniversary has arrived.
Suffice it to say I find that unbelievable as well: Yes, he was an undeniably great player, when he played. But his body simply didn’t hold up. Surely someone else — someone like Adrian Dantley or Bernard King or Pau Gasol or even Dwight Howard — was more deserving of a spot on one of those teams.
As for Walton’s second career, yeah, he shoots every time he gets it. Shoots from the hip, in point of fact. And while that can be amusing, it doesn’t always hit the mark.