Canzano: Bill Walton is dead at 71
"Everything about my life is about making things better."
Bill Walton didn’t show up in Las Vegas at the Pac-12 Conference Tournament in March. We all suspected something was wrong. He wouldn’t have missed the final basketball event of the conference he loved so much.
Walton died on Monday surrounded by his family after an extended battle with cancer.
He was 71.
Where were you when you heard the news? I was in the garden with my 9-year-old daughter. We were putting a hibiscus plant in the ground. I was explaining that it needed sun, water, nutrients, and good soil. I glanced at a text.
“Bill Walton died,” a friend said.
He was a two-time NBA champion. A seven-foot hippie with an eclectic personality and an unforgettable grin. Walton told me more than once that his mission in life was to leave the world better than he found it.
“Everything about my life is about making things better,” he said. “Better for the team.”
Better for UCLA. Then, the Trail Blazers. And the Boston Celtics. The world, too. You, me, and everyone else? Certainly his wife and children. We were all part of the world and by extension, Bill Walton’s team.
So what’s your favorite Walton memory? A game he played? A chance encounter? A story he told on a TV broadcast? The afternoon Walton and the Trail Blazers beat the 76ers and won the 1977 NBA title, maybe?
Walton woke up the morning after that game at Lionel Hollins’ high-rise penthouse in downtown Portland. The center told me he hitchhiked back to his house, put on a fresh T-shirt, jumped on his bicycle, and rode it over the Broadway Bridge toward a sea of people at the victory celebration at Schrunk Plaza.
Walton said: “It was like riding your bike into the Grateful Dead parking lot.”
It’s no secret that Walton was torn up about the end of the Pac-12. It was his conference — “THE conference of champions” — as he said often. When UCLA announced it was leaving for the Big Ten, he wrote a lengthy missive and asked me to publish it.
“Every argument made by these senior ADs and why they like it is about money,” he wrote.
Maybe you remember a pass Walton made. Good heavens, he was a terrific passer, wasn’t he? Or a dunk. Or one of his blocked shots. Or maybe you saw Walton play in the 1973 NCAA title game, where he made 21 of his 22 shot attempts, scored 44 points, and led his team to a win over Memphis State. It remains the most dominant performance ever on that stage.
Me?
I can’t pick just one Walton story. I’d love to hear yours. But I’ll give you a fun one that happened during the 2005 NBA Finals. Walton and his old NBA coach, Dr. Jack Ramsay, happened to be staying on the same floor of the hotel I was at in San Antonio. I woke early one morning to the sound of a high-pitched voice in the hallway, knocking on Ramsay’s door, repeatedly saying: “Housekeeeeeeeping!! Housekeeeeeeping!!”
I opened my door to see what the disturbance was about. It was Walton, pranking Ramsay. He had one hand over the peephole and the other knocking incessantly while trying to stifle his laughter. I’ll remember him as a Hall of Fame basketball player, an outspoken social advocate, and an entertaining broadcaster. But at his core, Walton was a positive, upbeat, fun-loving, red-headed kid with a good sense of humor.
He enjoyed being a rebel, too. For a spell, the Trail Blazers forbade front-office employees from appearing on my radio show. They couldn’t stop Walton, though. The franchise flew him to Portland to help celebrate the anniversary of the 1977 title. He insisted on doing my show. After the death of Walton was announced by the NBA on Monday, I received a text from Michael Lewellen, a former Trail Blazers’ vice president.
Lewellen said: “Remember during the 40th anniversary of that 1977 championship team when Walton and I strolled into your studios downtown?”
They stayed an hour. I’ll never forget it.
“He always remembered that, too,” Lewellen said.
Years later, during the early weeks of the pandemic, I brought Walton back on the show. He was in the mood to give a pep talk to humanity. Before signing off that day, Walton said: “The dream is real. The dream is alive. Yes, the long, lonesome road is out there. Everything is hard until it becomes easy.”
It was a quintessential Walton rant. The guy was a poet. I’m reminded at a time like this that he belonged to the universe. As a friend put it on Monday: “Where you would even begin to scatter the ashes of a man who truly loved every inch of soil he ever sat foot on?”
It’s why I didn’t immediately come inside to begin writing this column when I learned Bill Walton was dead. My daughter and I finished planting that hibiscus. We put it in the ground. She arranged the soil and watered it. I didn’t say anything. I watched her and kept thinking that Walton would have loved the simplicity of a moment like that.
The Pac-12’s final event ended on Saturday night.
Walton died on Monday.
Nobody who understood the man will miss the significance of that.
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My son was a server in a restaurant where Bill Walton was eating dinner. He was too shy to talk with Bill even though he was a die hard fan of his. But the restaurant manager told Bill that my son was a fan. A few minutes later Bill walks up to my son and hands him an autographed jersey!
“The Pac-12’s final event ended on Saturday night.
Walton died on Monday.
Nobody who understood the man will miss the significance of that.”
And this is how I will remember him as a UCLA fan. I wasn’t even alive when he played so my best memories are of him as a broadcaster. For all the people decrying his antics, he truly revered Coach Wooden, UCLA, and THE Conference of Champions.
He stood up for the West Coast at a time when it was at its lowest. And more importantly he was a man of conscience who stood against injustice when it mattered. I will always hold him in esteem for everything he represented.