Bill Walton, San Diego icon, basketball superstar, award-winning television analyst, certified Deadhead, cyclist, philanthropist, political activist, philosopher, father, grandfather, loyal friend, jovial stranger, self-described luckiest guy in the world, has died. He was 71.
The 6-foot-11 center, who won titles at Helix High School in La Mesa, two at UCLA and two in the NBA before moving back to San Diego and working with dozens of local charities, lost a protracted battle with colon cancer. The NBA released the news of his death Monday morning with a statement saying he was “surrounded by his family.”
“He was Mr. San Diego,” said former San Diego State basketball coach Steve Fisher, whose first recruiting class included Walton’s son, Chris. “That’s who he was. He loved this city like no other. He was so proud of the fact that he grew up here, went to high school here, his parents were here.
“I don’t know who else would be on that list, but they would be a distant second in terms of athletes who call San Diego home. It was home for him from birth to today. He was what you hope you can be, never complaining, always a smile on his face, had time for everybody. You couldn’t go to an event he wasn’t at. He did everything for everybody, and loved this city, boy, like none other.”
As news of his death spread Monday, the heartfelt, high-profile eulogies kept coming.
President Barack Obama, an avid basketball fan, posted on social media that Walton “was one of the greatest basketball players of all time — a champion at every level and the embodiment of unselfish team play (while) also a wonderful spirit full of curiosity, humor and kindness.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called him “truly one of a kind” and lauded his “zest for life … always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth.”
Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said “the world feels so much heavier now,” noting that Walton “wasn’t happy unless he did everything he could to make everyone around him happy.”
“They talk about (NBA MVP Nikola) Jokic being the most skilled center but Bill Walton was first,” Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson tweeted. “He was one of the smartest basketball players to ever live.”
San Diego Clippers center Bill Walton fractured a bone on the ring finger of his right hand during a Dec. 4, 1983 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers.
(Peter Koeleman/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
That career was spawned in La Mesa, the son of a music teacher and librarian who knew nothing about basketball. William Theodore Walton III was skinny, too, after sprouting 6 inches between his sophomore and junior year at Helix High, but his older brother Bruce — who would play football for the Dallas Cowboys — served as an on-court enforcer for anyone who dared mess with him.
Walton won his final 49 games at Helix, which included two section championships, three games with 30 or more rebounds and record 78.3 percent shooting (most players are in the 30s or 40s).
He went to UCLA and didn’t lose a game until the middle of his senior season. Freshmen were ineligible back then, but Walton won his first 70 games as a sophomore, junior and senior as part of UCLA’s record 88-game win streak before Notre Dame famously ended it.
Walton had missed the previous three games after injuring his back and wore a brace against Notre Dame. It would become a theme for his career, moments of sheer brilliance interrupted by injuries — feet, ankles, knees, back. According to one count, he underwent 39 surgeries.
While at UCLA, Walton clashed with legendary coach John Wooden, first over his beard and shoulder-length mane of red hair, then after he was arrested protesting the Vietnam War. “Your generation has screwed up the world,” Walton said in a statement following his arrest. “My generation is trying to straighten it out.”
In this Oct. 20, 1980, file photo, John Wooden, center, former UCLA basketball coach, poses with UCLA alumni and pro basketball stars Bill Walton, left, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
(Associated Press)
Still, Walton stayed on the court long enough to claim three national player of the year awards, win two national titles and make 21 of 22 shot attempts in an epic 44-point performance in the 1973 championship game.
It wasn’t just the points, though. Walton redefined a position that had been the purview of thick, immobile behemoths who parked under the basketball; here was a guy who could grab a rebound and fire an outlet pass to start the fast break before he hit the floor.
“Walton is the type of player who wouldn’t have to score at all, yet he’ll dominate the game,” Wooden was quoted in the 1973 book, “The Wizard of Westwood.” “And the pleasant thing is, he enjoys not scoring.”
The Portland Trail Blazers, a 1970 expansion franchise that had never reached the playoffs, selected him No. 1 overall in the 1974 NBA Draft. In 1977, after an injury-plagued first two seasons, they won their first and only NBA championship thanks to 20 points, 23 rebounds, seven assists and eight blocks from Walton in the clinching game. In 1978, he became the only Portland player ever to win the league’s MVP.
Bill Walton blocks a shot during a 1983 game.
(Jim Baird / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Walton coaxed a trade to his hometown Los Angeles Clippers in 1979 and signed a then-record seven-year, $7 million contract, but his injury issues deepened and he missed more games than he played. In 1984, the team moved to Los Angeles. In 1985, Walton moved to the Boston Celtics, where he won his second NBA title and was named the league’s Sixth Man of the Year.
He played one more season with the Celtics, limited to just 10 games by injuries, and retired. He finished his career missing more than half of the regular season games, including three entire seasons, yet still was a slam-dunk inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.
In many ways, Walton was a man defined by a hyper-critical conscience and later in life apologized for earlier transgressions, no matter whether they were within his control and genuinely warranted.
In 2009, he returned to Portland for a charity function and spoke remorsefully about his time with the Trail Blazers.
“I’m here to try and make amends for the mistakes and errors of the past,” Walton told media. “I regret that I wasn’t a better person, a better player. I regret that I got hurt. I regret the circumstances in which I left the Portland Trail Blazers’ family. I just wish I could do a lot of things over, but I can’t.”
In a 2016 interview, he addressed his time with the Clippers, hinting that if he were healthy and the team won more, owner Donald Sterling never would have relocated to Los Angeles.
“When you fail in your hometown, that’s as bad as it gets, and I love my hometown,” Walton told ESPN. “I wish we had NBA basketball here, and we don’t because of me. It’s my greatest failure as a professional in my entire life. … It’s a stain and stigma on my soul that is indelible. I’ll never be able to wash that off, and I carry it with me forever.”
A few years ago, a staffer at the Pechanga Arena overheard General Manager Ernie Hahn mentioning he was having lunch with Walton. The staffer mentioned that when he was 12 and living in Portland, he had gone to a Trail Blazers game and asked the star center for an autograph — and had been rebuffed.
Hahn told the story over lunch, and the next day Walton arrived unannounced at the arena with a ball, jersey and Sports Illustrated covers he signed for the staffer.
Walton moved back to San Diego after his playing career and launched one in 1990 as a TV commentator after overcoming a childhood stuttering problem. He was best known for touting his beloved Pac-12 as the “Conference of Champions” and drifting into eccentric stream of consciousness tangents that sometimes had little to do with the game. The Grateful Dead, his favorite band that he saw in concert hundreds of times, was a common topic. He regularly wore tie-dyed concert T-shirts on air.
He continued to struggle with past injuries, ultimately having surgery to fuse both ankles and his back. He broadcast games from an elevated chair to take stress off his 6-11 frame.
“He’d take the headset off during a commercial break and just say to me: ‘I love you, but don’t tell anybody,’” Dave Pasch, who played the straight man for Walton’s on-air antics, said on an ESPN tribute Monday. “He just enjoyed the fact that I was his sparring partner and that he could have fun with me and take shots at me, and I knew that it was all part of the game. Off the air, we had a great friendship.”
Basketball legend a La Mesa native Bill Walton poses for photos at the dedication of the Boys & Girls Clubs of East County grand opening celebration of the Brady Family Clubhouse and Eleni and Wolfgang Gagon Academy along with the Bill Walton Gymnasium in 2018
(San Diego Union-Tribune)
Walton also was a factor in the ascendancy of SDSU’s basketball program from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best. Chris Walton, one of his four sons who all played college basketball, spent four years on Fisher’s teams and would host prospective recruits on their campus visits.
“Bill became a San Diego State unabashed advocate and booster, did nothing but promote me and the program,” Fisher said. “I don’t think — I know — he helped jumpstart our program along with Chris in so many different ways. He had a voice, people listened, and he was quick to brag on the Aztecs. I was very appreciative.
“Invariably, one of the days (during visits) — many times on Saturday morning after breakfast — we’d head over to the Waltons to meet Bill. That was a thrill for the parents and the recruits. It was incredible. You didn’t know what you’d see — a Grateful Dead jukebox in the living room or you’d walk the grounds and there was a teepee that looked like it could sleep four people. I remember one recruit telling his dad: ‘It was a hippie mansion.’”
Bill and Lori Walton in 2010.
(Earnie Grafton/San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre)
Walton and his wife Lori were devoted philanthropists who channeled their charitable giving, in part, through the Lucky Duck Foundation, founded in 2005 as a conduit for multiple causes. In recent years it became focused exclusively on addressing homelessness, an issue that Walton spoke about publicly as he called on local government to do more to help the unsheltered and take back public places like his beloved Balboa Park where the homeless would tend to congregate.
“He had such a deep passion for helping those in need and did everything in his power to support Lucky Duck,” said the foundation’s CEO, Drew Moser. “If he felt by speaking up he could help those in need, he would absolutely speak up and use his voice to drive change and improvement of the city.
“And it was never about him. He’d come to a community event or fundraising event and hold court with anyone and everyone who’d want to spend time with him.”
More recently, Walton had become involved in a Lucky Duck initiative called “Shamrocks & Shipwrecks,” which Moser described as a scoring system for grading the political will and effectiveness of public agencies in addressing homelessness.
Bill Walton reacts during a 2022 news conference on behalf of the Lucky Duck Foundation.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
During a news conference a couple years ago to publicize the initiative, Walton expressed his frustration with San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s efforts to address homelessness.
“What I want the city to do is their job,” Walton said. “What is their basic job? To provide a safe and secure, healthy, clean environment for us to live, work and play. That does not mean allowing massive homeless encampments that disrupt everything.”
Gloria issued a statement Monday on Walton’s passing and did not allude to their verbal disagreements.
“San Diego mourns the loss of the legendary Bill Walton today,” Gloria wrote. “He was a towering figure in basketball and broadcasting as well as a civic icon who loved his hometown. Our city’s thoughts are with his wife, Lori, and the entire Walton family. Godspeed, Bill.”
Longtime Balboa Park volunteer Betty Peabody remembers Walton as a tireless advocate for the park that bordered his home. The two of them served together on a now disbanded committee that pushed for a plan to make the center of Balboa Park into a pedestrian-only zone. While the plan ultimately did not come to pass, Peabody recalls Walton’s commitment to the effort.
“I remember how he would carry his own special high chair to all the committee meetings because he couldn’t sit in another chair,” said Peabody, a founder of Friends of Balboa Park, now known as Forever Balboa Park. “He was always so amiable and affable and just a good guy all around. He cared very much about the park and preserving park land.”
Over the years, Walton’s name has been associated with a number of charities.
Walton was a strong supporter of the Brad Fowler Memorial scholarship award that is made each year through the San Diego Sports Association. The award honors students around the county who use sports as a way of overcoming adversity related to substance abuse. He would not only help with fundraising, but would also attend the scholarship luncheons honoring the students.
Champions for Health, Father Joe’s Villages and Feeding San Diego were among the beneficiaries four years ago when Walton, a longtime cyclist, helped raise $100,000 in donations during his inaugural Bike for Humanity event.
His passion for cycling also came into play during the many years he participated in the Challenged Athletes Foundation’s annual Million Dollar Challenge, a seven-day bike ride from San Francisco to San Diego that raises funds to help athletes with physical challenges gain access to sports.
“Despite his foot and back injuries, Bill would do the ride for many years,” recalled Foundation co-founder Jeffrey Essakow. “He would come and do the ride with such incredible passion and enthusiasm.
“He would always come in way behind all the others, two and three hours later, and when everyone was at dinner, he’d come into the dining room, covered in dirt and sunscreen and put his hands up in that famous way and always say the same thing: ‘I got to ride my bike today. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.’”
