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Bill Walton joins the immortals


WITH the death on Monday of Bill Walton at just 71, the world of basketball has lost one of its greatest ever players and one of the most unique personalities in the game, writes our US correspondent BOB CRAVEN. A star at both college and professional level, Walton was the quintessential "one of a kind". 

From BOB CRAVEN

WITH the death of Bill Walton at 71, the world of basketball has lost one of its greatest ever players and one of the most unique personalities in the game. 

He was larger than life in more ways than just his size.  He was a two-time NCAA champion at UCLA under John Wooden, and a two-time champion in the NBA. 

He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame and was named to the All-NBA anniversary teams of the first 50 years and the first 75 years.  

Walton was the NBA's MVP with Portland in 1977-78 and the league's Sixth Man of the Year in 1985-86 at Boston. That Celtics team still is rated by many as the greatest single-season NBA team of all time. Sadly Walton's NBA career was disrupted by chronic foot injuries and lasted only 468 games.

At UCLA, he was a three-time NCAA Player of the Year, and in his first two seasons, UCLA went 60-0 and won two NCAA titles. 

They won their first 13 games in his final year before Notre Dame beat them 71-70, ending UCLA's record NCAA winning streak at 88 games.  Walton was 12-of-14 from the field in that game. 

In his college career, UCLA went 86-4, with two of those losses coming on back-to-back nights in Oregon in Pac-8 play - to the U. of Oregon on a Friday and to Oregon State U. the next night. 

Those games are still referred to by the UCLA faithful as "The Lost Weekend." 

The fourth loss that year was to North Carolina State with David "Skywalker" Thompson and 223cm centre Tom Burleson in double overtime in an NCAA tournament semifinal game. 

Many in the media have said that was the greatest NCAA game ever played. 

Walton's most famous college game was the NCAA title game the year before that (1973) when UCLA beat Memphis State for the championship.  In that game, Walton set finals records which still stand. He was 21-of-22 from the field and scored 44 points. 

After the game, Wooden (pictured above with Walton) is alleged to have said to him that, "I always thought you were a really good player until you missed that one shot."

After his playing days were over, he became perhaps even more famous in the US as a broadcaster — amazing, as by his own admission, he was practically mute because of a pronounced stutter which he finally overcame at age 28. 

He won an Emmy for his sports broadcasting, and eventually was named by the American Sportscasters Association as one of the top 50 sports broadcasters of all time.  He even made the NY Times bestseller list for his memoir, "Back from the Dead".

He was an icon, larger than life, a chronic fun-seeker (Jerry García, an American musician who was the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Walton idolised, the Grateful Dead, once said that Walton attended more than 1,000 of their shows) and did not adhere to conventional norms — and took great joy in that. 

Walton passed away this past Monday after a long struggle with prostate cancer.  He was surrounded by his wife and four sons at the end. 

One of those sons, Luke, a 204cm forward, was an all-star at the U. of Arizona, and played and has coached for several years in the NBA, winning two titles as a player with the Lakers and one as a coach with the Warriors. 

Luke was named after Maurice Lucas, a good friend of his dad from their days with title-winning Portland Trailblazers. This past season, he was the assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

A personal note from the author:  As was always the case with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before him, there was a bit of ongoing controversy over how tall Bill Walton really was. 

Abdul-Jabbar always was listed in college and in the NBA as 218cm, but I saw a TV interview with Dick Enberg, who was the TV play-by-play announcer for UCLA back in the day before he was hired away to do national network broadcasting. 

He was the judge in a charity function in LA where the prize winner had to guess Kareem's height.  Enberg said he was measured as 225cm.

Whenever I watched Walton's UCLA teams play in person, usually at the U. of Oregon, he always seemed to me to be noticeably taller than the stated 211cm.  At one of those games, I had the opportunity to stand by the bench next to an Oregon big man who was a legitimate 209cm. 

Then, watching him stand next to Walton when the teams shot free throws, Walton seemed to be 5-7cm taller than his Oregon counterpart.  I also listened to him giving an interview where he was asked why he always said he was about 211cm tall, when he seemed noticeably taller than that. 

His reply was that "anyone taller than 7 feet (213cm) is a freak (his word), and I'm not a freak.  Therefore, I will always be listed as (about) 211cm.

Personal Note from the Editor: Had the great pleasure of being introduced to Bill Walton by Australian basketball's "General" Phil Smyth during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Phil was commentating the basketball for Network 7 and we were having a coffee at Darling Harbour during some time off when big Bill wandered by.

A giant of a presence, his smile lit up the area in every direction, meeting him a brief but forever memorable highlight. Watching him as he walked away, it was evident every step was a difficult one, his body betraying the brilliant skill but never the mind of one of the game's all-time greatest.

May 29

Content, unless otherwise indicated, is © copyright Boti Nagy.