The Luckiest Guy in the World has left us

The Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza pays tribute to the one and only Bill Walton ... who really believed he deserved to wear that tag even with so much justification to feel extremely unlucky

LONDON — The first NBA season that I really, really remember well, way back in 1977-78, was seared into my consciousness by three major happenings that mesmerized Little Kid Me.

🏀 My Buffalo Braves went 27-55 after Tiny Archibald tore his Achilles in the Braves' final preseason game — meaning Tiny never actually suited up for them alongside fellow speedster Randy Smith — and then crushingly moved to San Diego at season's end. Reviled Buffalo owner John Y. Brown swapped his ownership rights with Boston's Irv Levin in a still hard-to-believe trade ... enabling Levin to immediately relocate his new franchise across the country to Southern California.

🏀 Denver's David Thompson scored 73 points on the final day of the season and still lost the scoring title because San Antonio's George Gervin answered with 63 ... all of which I could only follow via radio updates and was later mortified to discover that somehow not a single dribble or basket from that epic duel was preserved on TV tape for us to ever relive.

🏀 A redheaded center named Bill Walton who so masterfully controlled the game at both ends, fresh off teaming with former Braves coach Dr. Jack Ramsay to lead the Portland Trail Blazers to a championship in just the seventh season of the club's existence, powered the Blazers to a 50-10 start ... only to suffer a season-ending foot injury.

Walton was regarded at the time as one of the three best basketball players on the planet alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving, but that cruelly didn't last. He won that season's MVP award despite appearing in only 58 games, still the NBA's all-time low for an MVP winner, but he was never the same player. Walton went on to lose three full seasons to injury and would eventually endure — no misprint — nearly 40 surgeries of various types.

I so vividly remember my first Bill Walton basketball card, as well as my first Walton card after he had demanded a trade and then signed as a free agent with his hometown Clippers in San Diego, mainly because those cards were often the only way, sadly, to make Bill Walton seem tangible for much of my youth.

It was thankfully a very different story in Walton's second life as a basketball broadcaster. He couldn't have been more omnipresent and more inspirational across the past three decades. So often with wife Lori at his side, Walton was a relentlessly positive and joy-seeking human, which always struck so many of us as remarkable because he had so, so much to be bitter about.

Walton died Monday at the age of 71 after a withering bout with cancer that he mostly tried to conceal from the public. I spent most of that sad day grieving here on the other side of the Atlantic, trying to explain to my bewildered son Aaron on our brief soccer getaway why I felt a need to keep explaining to him what a transcendent figure Bill was and why his passing shook me so. Regular readers have heard me complain frequently about how poorly we've done in general in the NBA community with preserving history from the 1970s and Aaron, as I feared, had zero knowledge as a 21st century teenager of Walton's towering presence as a player.

I was too young myself to have legit familiarity with Walton's prime ... or Bill's way-ahead-of-his time social activism at UCLA and in Portland. The one season that I truly got to enjoy his Jokić-before-Jokić passing gifts was his Sixth Man of the Year campaign with Boston in 1985-86 in which the give-and-go telepathy he shared with Larry Bird helped make those Celtics one of the five greatest teams you ever saw.

Yet it doesn't really matter what I missed out on. Bill was one of the most engaging, curious and magnetic personalities that I've ever encountered in my time covering #thisleague and, like the venerable Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan tweeted, it was truly a privilege to know him.

You have probably read tribute after Walton tribute by now about how much he will be missed, because Big Bill had a remarkable ability in his post-playing life to make you feel like the most important person in the room. Sometimes in the whole world … like you were as good at your job as Walton legitimately was starring for John Wooden at UCLA and Ramsay at his Trail Blazers peak.

Even though he would have shouted me down had I ever tried to thank him for any of it, I owe him so much for the way he welcomed me to NBA life as a Clippers beat writer who still had the look of a nervy teen-ager when I started. Walton, as a team broadcaster, would call me frequently to ask for background and what I was seeing and hearing from various teams. I could never quite believe it. I had been covering the NBA for about five minutes. What could I have possibly told Bill Walton about basketball?

Those trading cards had come to life in ways I never could have imagined.

His hyperbolic (and, OK, oft-farcical) broadcasting style might have been too much for some, but I was truly grateful for every interaction. How could I be so grumpy when Bill, with every cause to be, seemingly never was?

I will never forget going to Pauley Pavilion for a historic trip with my beloved Cal State Fullerton in December 2019 — magical not only because we actually won the game or that I got to take it all in as a member of the team's traveling party as the guest of Titans coach Dedrique Taylor. It's because Bill insisted that I come on the UCLA broadcast in the second half and eventually say a few words about the Fullerton journalism professor, Jay Berman, who was so instrumental in the formative years of my career. Thanks to Bill, I got away with some of my own televised hyperbole that day, referring to Titan Tech as the Harvard of the West when it came to journalism.

The last time I had the opportunity to spend any meaningful time with Bill was at the Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies in Springfield, Mass., in September 2022. He spotted me in attendance with longtime Golden State Warriors public relations ace Raymond Ridder and two more titans from the NBA's golden-era PR machine: Brian McIntyre and Terry Lyons. Walton insisted that the five of us huddle for a photo. He demanded it.

I'm so glad now that he did. I remember Raymond and I texting him later that day to thank him for the gesture.

"Thank you for my life," Walton replied ... as he loved to say often in his over-the-top way that another former Bruins star, Marques Johnson, so aptly captured with this tweet:

Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, Walton's teammate from those immortal '86 Celtics, put it beautifully Monday night before Indiana's final loss of a valiant season when asked to explain Walton's everyday philosophy.

"He defiantly competed for every moment in life to be the greatest it could possibly be," Carlisle said. "That's the best way to describe it."

It is indeed.

Missing tonight's Game 4 of the Western Conference finals in Dallas will be difficult, but not because I won't be in the live audience for a potential Mavericks sweep no one saw coming. What hurts is missing out on the forthcoming pregame moment of silence for Bill, who rightfully received the same treatment Monday night in Indianapolis before the Celtics completed a 4-0 sweep of the Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals and who will forever have my gratitude.

I've naturally focused here on my personal connections to Walton — too much so probably — but you’ll find lots of us doing that this week because he befriended seemingly zillions of us leaguewide. There is so much more, regardless, that should be remembered, discussed and celebrated. Bill conquered countless debilitating challenges in his 71 years and I urge you to read these remembrances from fellow Substackers John Canzano, Jay Mariotti and Mark Whicker, who covered many angles that I haven’t.

As only Whick could put it: The one-of-a-kind Bill Walton "was often repaired but won't be replaced."

I would also highly recommend this July 2023 piece from Whick which reviews the four-part ESPN documentary series on Walton titled The Luckiest Guy in The World.

Walton truly believed that ... even with so many reasons not to. He especially believed it after rebounding from torturous back trouble in the early 2000s that nearly killed him and, farther back, overcoming the severe stutter that made him painfully shy until he was nearly 30. He especially believed it when you encountered him in Proud Dad mode, rooting on his son Luke Walton as an NBA player, head coach and the Phil Jackson-schooled calmer foil to his zany dad.

Leave it to William Theodore Walton III to transform himself, after all those playing-days hardships, into the savor-every-second-on-Earth commentator who could never stop talking.