Very early in his autobiography, shortly after touching upon the dark day in 2009 that years of chronic back pain made him contemplate suicide, Bill Walton quotes George Bernard Shaw. When a former NBA player turned television pundit namechecks a literary giant, it's often an indication they are trying a little too hard. In Walton's case, however, the Shavian snippet from Man and Superman rings true because here is somebody whose esoteric frame of reference often veers very, very far from the basketball court he once bestrode.
"Bill is probably the only person who's ever been able to tie together, in the same sentence, Mother Teresa, Michael Jordan, climate change, the Berlin Wall and – what's that ballerina's name? Baryshnikov," said Jim Grey, one of his co-commentators. "Before you know it, you're off to Ferdinand Magellan. I'll say to him sometimes: 'What about the game?' He'll say: 'It doesn't matter, the people can see the game.'"
It's not that Walton doesn't know the game. At UCLA under the legendary John Wooden, the six foot 11 inch centre from San Diego was three times national player of the year, garnered a pair of championships, and went as first pick in the 1974 draft to the Portland Trail Blazers. Even if his subsequent NBA career was blighted by injuries that required 37 operations, and, he estimates, thieved him of nine and a half of his 14 seasons as a pro, he still won two titles and did spectacularly enough in truncated cameos to make the league's top 50 of all time.
His physical misfortunes may have contributed to him developing a more holistic world view than his more cloistered peers. Walton spent his downtime on the road with The Grateful Dead, immersing himself in the tie-dye philosophy of the world’s most celebrated jam band, attending 859 of their concerts since his first encounter with them at 15. He tuned in and, occasionally, he dropped out.
To him, his twin passions of music and sport are forever intertwined. So, an NBA player enjoying a good night might be compared to Beethoven composing the fifth or Liszt at the piano, and there is never a bad time to digress about the band he has regularly joined on stage during gigs. While working a college basketball game last year, for instance, he went off on an extended three-minute riff about the night in 1989 that Bob Dylan guested with The Dead at the Los Angeles Forum.
“I’m a Deadhead,” said Walton. “It all rolls into one and I’ve never been able to separate basketball from life. I’m living under a series of mantras from The Grateful Dead right now. I learned from them about how to become a champion. I became the basketball player that I was because of The Grateful Dead. I am the human being I am today because of The Grateful Dead. They’re right there at the top of my teachers. Their inspiration moved me brightly.”
Just like his favourite band, not everyone is a fan. Some regard his tendency to view basketball through the prism of his eclectic range of interests as tired, old shtick. They don’t understand that his lengthy excursions through the counter culture afford him a perspective that encourages him to entertain (“John Stockton is one of the true marvels, not just of basketball but in the history of Western civilization!”) and amuse (“Mick Jagger is in better shape than far too many NBA players. It’s up in the air whether the same can be said of Keith Richards.”). In an American sports world that often takes itself way too seriously, he retains an ageing hippie’s appreciation of the proper place of sport.
“I told Luke, ‘you’re young, you’re rich and you’re living in Beverly Hills,’” said Walton about a conversation with his son who was then winning titles with the Los Angeles Lakers. “‘If you’re not having the time of your life right now, I’ve failed you as a father.’”
After Luke was appointed head coach of the Lakers last week, his father tweeted a mischievous photograph of him as a cherubic infant, and asked, “Who would have thought that little Luke Walton would be the head coach of the Lakers?” An especially pertinent question given that Bill had earlier spoken publicly about how he advised the neophyte not to take over an historic club that requires some serious rebuilding.
One of the many revelations in the extravagantly-titled Back from the Dead: Searching for the Sound, Shining the Light, and Throwing it Down is that the most loquacious and occasionally verbose characters on American television (an intensely competitive category) had to overcome a childhood stutter.
“Learning how to speak is my greatest accomplishment,” said Walton. “And everybody else’s worst nightmare.”
His own nightmare came in 2008 when a spine collapse reduced him to spending most of every day lying on the floor of his house. The voice that launched a thousand quips fell silent and he freely admits that if he had access to a gun during that time he would have ended it all. Innovative surgery saved him and explains why he reckons Shaw had it about right when the Dubliner wrote about needing to be “a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
Words he has, mostly, lived by.
