Social media has been flooded with pictures since Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton died Monday at age 71 from colon cancer.
Those photos – all of a smiling, gracious 6-11 Walton towering over someone he just met wanting a selfie with him – tell everything you need to know why he was so beloved.
He loved people. All races. Tall or short. Skinny or overweight. Rich or poor.
Whether he kibitzed at courtside with the CEO of a multi-million company or shot the breeze with an elderly security guard working the players and media entrance at an arena loading dock, he always had time for conversation.
Wanted to know where you were from, what college you attended, what you did for a living, if you were married and if you had kids. It was important for him to connect.
One of the first times I talked to Walton was when I worked in Memphis for almost three decades writing for The Commercial Appeal newspaper.
I was writing an extensive feature on former Memphis State head basketball coach Larry Finch, a legend in his younger years a Tigers’ All-American guard who led MSU to the 1973 NCAA national championship game vs. Walton and coach John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty.
Finch scored 29 points but Walton scored 44 (still a championship game record), hitting 21 of 22 field goals and grabbing 13 rebounds in an 87-66 victory.
With under three minutes left, Walton injured his ankle and had to leave the game. Finch helped him off the floor all to the UCLA bench, an apparent act of magnanimous sportsmanship.
Five years after Finch had been fired as Memphis State’s coach at the end of the 1996-97 season, he suffered a massive heart attack and two strokes that left him partially paralyzed and affected his speech.
But it didn’t alter his memory or his sense of humor when I visited him in a nursing/rehabilitation center for my story. I asked him why he helped the injured Walton to the bench.
“Larry, some people think to this day it’s one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship they’ve ever seen at the Final Four,” I said.
Finch, who died in 2011, smiled as best he could, then gestured for me to lean close to him so I could hear his answer.
“Sportsmanship. . .my. . .ass,” he said in a halting cadence. “He was kicking our butt. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t coming back in the game.”
Finch laughed long and hard, just as Walton did when I tracked him down by phone for a response to what Finch said.
For the next 30 minutes, Walton quizzed me on Finch’s health and what he could do to help him.
He remembered UCLA would have been in trouble in the title game had the Tigers’ high-flying forward Larry Kenon not been in foul trouble and how UCLA had no answer stopping Finch. He also admired Finch later when he became a head coach because he never cheated in recruiting and was loyal to his kids.
I had no idea how Walton knew all of that. But he did. He tried to learn the best attributes of everyone he met.
His positivity was intoxicating, despite the fact he had (by his estimation) 38 surgeries over the years mostly to his knees, feet, ankles, toes and wrists. Those injuries and the constant pain he endured forced him to play in just 44 percent of the games in his 13-year NBA career.
He still managed to post career averages of 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds, was the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 1978 and NBA Finals MVP in 1977 for Portland before injuries took away his marvelous athleticism. He was also named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year in 1986 when he won another NBA title as a backup for Celtics’ center and former Centenary star Robert Parish, a Shreveport native.
The first thing Walton did when he was about to join the Celtics in September 1985 was go to Parish’s house in Boston and tell him he had no aspirations of replacing him in the starting lineup. He just wanted to help the Celtics win.
“He (Walton) thought enough of me to make sure I was comfortable with him being on the team,” Parish told the Boston Globe in 2016. “That’s why I have the utmost respect for Bill Walton and that’s the main reason why he was my inductee into the Hall of Fame (in 2003). Bill Walton is my main man, for that reason.”
Walton once tried to tutor former LSU star Shaquille O’Neal when Tigers’ head coach Dale Brown brought him to Baton Rouge for a week at the start of the 1992-93 season.
Most of the younger generation knew Walton, who once had a personal 142-game winning streak that lasted almost five years from high school through his senior season at UCLA, for his off-beat color commentary on college basketball telecasts.
They didn’t realize Walton, a pontificating master of hyperbole, overcame a stuttering problem at age 28. He started his broadcast career in 1990 and called his last game in February.
Lionel Hollins, Portland’s starting guard on the ’77 NBA title who later became head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, loved talking about Walton’s competitive spirit.
But he always concluded there was one indisputable characteristic about the big redhead, who married twice and had four sons including Adam, who played 22 games for LSU from 1995-97 before transferring.
“He’s simply a great human being,” Hollins said.
Yes. He was all that and more.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com