My mother on occasion would quote Ernest Hemingway, who as he approached old age, declared “people are dying who never died before.” I knew what he meant, but I didn’t think much about it, till fairly recently, because, well, people are dying who never died before.

Whoa! What a way to start a sports column that intends to appeal to various generations.

I am responding to the deaths recently of friends, yes, but also of monumental sports figures, in particular, Jerry West and Willie Mays — and Bill Walton, who all died for the first time. West and Mays represent the apotheosis of their sports, occupying the very summit of basketball and baseball heights.

Walton died at 71 on May 27, not an age where you can say he was cheated in life, but it does seem he died too young. He was making such a joyful noise in the world.

Bill Walton’s greatness as an athlete is also beyond dispute. As a very tall, shy, skinny, red-haired kid, he led his high school team in San Diego to undefeated seasons and state championships. He then went to UCLA, was coached by the legendary John Wooden, and led the Bruins to an 88-game winning streak, a three-year record of 88-4, and two National Championships.

BILL WALTON, WHO died at 71 on May 27, is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, one of the greatest players in basketball history. In his 20s, he protested the Vietnam War and was arrested at rallies. He, along with Muhammad Ali, was a controversial figure in American culture at the time.
Photo courtesy of Crawdaddy, thanks to Peter Knobler

He was arguably the greatest college basketball player ever, winning the College Player of the Year in his three years on the team (freshmen were ineligible). His performance in the National Championship game in 1973 (he made 21 of 22 shots for 44 points) many consider as the greatest in Final Four history.

He led the Portland Trailblazers to the 1977 NBA Championship and was named the tournament and league MVP. Walton experienced in basketball the highest of highs, but also some terrible lows, due to devastating injuries, chronically broken bones in his feet.

Basketball hardly defined Walton. He was so powerfully different in nature and character and his story is so compelling. His voice in his second career as a basketball commentator, color man, was distinctive, exuberant and hyperbolic. It’s hard to believe he grew up with a terrible stutter, not overcome until he was in his twenties (his friends claimed, “He didn’t say a word for the first half of his life — and he hasn’t stopped talking since!”).

Despite the devastating injuries in his basketball career and lifetime, he often referred to himself as the “luckiest guy in the world”: that’s the title of the excellent ESPN documentary about his life.

As one of his friends put it, he had an “insatiable appetite for music and movement.” He rode his bike, everywhere. He was a Deadhead, part of the Grateful Dead community and entourage, attending in his own estimate approximately 1,000 concerts. Mickey Hart, Dead drummer, said upon Bill’s death, “He was my best friend.”

He often compared music to basketball, loved the flow of basketball. His favorite play, he wrote in his 2016 memoir “Back from the Dead,” was getting a defensive rebound, outletting it to a guard and then watching the fast break develop, pass-by-pass, finishing with a layup at the other end.

He was smart and loved school (his dad was a music teacher, his mom a librarian). He was an academic All-American at UCLA, majoring in history. Thinking his career was over, in ’81, he was accepted in Stanford Law School and attended classes for a year and a half, before undergoing an experimental foot surgery and getting a last hurrah on the basketball court, winning an NBA Championship with the Celtics in 1986 as the Sixth Man.

My wife Brett was in graduate school at Stanford at the same time as Walton and says he was a familiar figure on campus, pretty recognizable at 6’11”. “We lived in the same part of town, so I would see him nearly every day riding his giant 10-speed bike to campus.

“It made me happy,” she said. “My mom and I lived in Eugene (Oregon) when I was in high school and I was a Trailblazers fan. I listened to their games in my bed at night on my transistor radio.”

In August 2011, my son Peter, then 16, and I happily found ourselves at the fancy dinner at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., the night before the induction ceremonies for the 2011 class of honorees (Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin, Tara Van Devere, Tom Sanders, Artis Gilmore, among other hoop luminaries).

Our neighbor Alex Wolff was receiving that night the prestigious Curt Gowdy Media Award for his extraordinary career at Sports Illustrated (36 years), writing largely about basketball. Many members of the Hall of Fame, previous inductees, were present.

BILL WALTON AS a free-spirited adult complemented his short white hair and giant smile with a tye-dye shirt.
Photo by Dominic DiSaia/UCLA

Early in the festivities, Peter joined a group surrounding Bill Walton, whose dress at this formal affair consisted of a brightly colored “Hawaiian” shirt, slacks, and sandals. When Peter’s turn came, Walton shook his hand and asked his name and age, and then he invited him to sit down. “Do you play basketball, Peter?”

Peter explained that he played on the Middlebury, Vt., high school team, the JVs.

“What kind of offense do you run?” Walton asked.

Peter, a little taken aback, said tentatively, “we run ‘motion.’”

“That’s so great,” Walton enthused. “You must have a smart coach.” Then he asked Peter about what he liked in school and Peter said, “reading and writing.”

They spoke further for about 10 minutes. “He seemed genuinely interested,” Peter confirmed.

Those 10 minutes gets Bill Walton a place in the front rank in the Lindholm Family Hall of Fame.

Now, that gets us to Bill Walton and me.

I actually felt an affinity for Bill Walton. In the nihilistic early 1970s, Walton tried to be a professional basketball player in the corporate NBA, the straight world, amid debilitating injuries, while identifying passionately with the values of what was then called the Counterculture (think hippies, Vietnam War protests).

He did this in his early 20s in front of the whole world and became the focus of enormous attention and criticism.

I had close friends who buried themselves in the counterculture — went to Canada, lived alternate lives in communes, disappeared, became addicted to drugs, died in Vietnam, survived.

I taught school, went to Army Reserve meetings, cut my hair, lived by the rules.

I admired Bill Walton for his independence and courage in this complex time.

Of Walton’s death, Rick Telander wrote on May 27 in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“It seems a gust of fresh air just left the room.”

—————

Contact Karl Lindholm at [email protected].