Remembering Bill Walton (1952-2024)
Remembering the man who taught everyone how to love the game and life itself. Even when it doesn't always love us back.
Monday, May 27, marked the final journey of Bill Walton’s long, strange trip around this planet with us. I say “with us” because that’s how he saw things. Or at least how he wanted us to see things. We’re all in this together in Walton’s World. Our success, if we are lucky enough to achieve it, depends on each other. Those lessons are why Walton’s spirit will live on, even though his body is no longer here.
Five years ago, in the afterglow of making the Western Conference Finals for the first time in nearly two decades, the Blazers organized a special event to celebrate the release of their 77-inspired City Edition uniforms, featuring a group bike ride with Walton. It was a perfect Portland summer day. It was akin to Portland’s infamous Naked Bike Ride, but instead of naked people, it was droves of people in Tye-Dye, TrillBlazin Walton tribute shirts and Blazers gear.
“If you get confused, just ride your bike and listen to the music,” Walton announced to the crowd before the bikes took off. Bill Schonley was there too. And in just over a year, the Blazers community has lost both of them.
I remember getting caught in I-5 on my way to Central Oregon last year during Schonley’s procession. The traffic at noon on a Friday and the police escorts caught me off-guard until I realized out loud to my wife Kelsey what we were in. As we drove by the highway past the Blazers practice facility and Bridgeport Village, the Schonley procession began and the loss began to sink in. Even though he wasn’t doing play-by-play for very long into my childhood, I remember what he meant to me and what he meant to my Dad. Anywhere where there were TVs in Oregon, Schonley had an impact over generations. Multiply that by the entire basketball-loving world and you get Walton’s legacy.
If only Walton could have had a bike procession like the one we had in August of 2019, but one that crossed oceans, time zones, languages and points of view. Maybe that would feel right. But everyday I feel lucky that we got to ride our bikes with him on that day.
Walton’s passing also had me thinking a lot about my Dad, who was born one year after Walton and died about three months ago from prostate cancer. Walton and my Dad were of the same generation, you see. A generation formed in the crucible of Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests. Many of them were the first in their families to go to college. And those were the values they passed down us: stop the wars for bullshit, stop hurting innocent people for corporate profits, give people at home equal rights, always be willing to learn, pass the ball to the open man and let people know that this is what you stand for.
After the bike ride for the jersey unveiling, the riders were treated to the tunes of a local Grateful Dead cover band. Walton, of course, made his way to the stage to play the bongos. Joints were passed, beers were drank and joy was had. It was the perfect Portland day. 2027 will mark 50 years since the 1977 title and the further away it gets, the more surreal it seems. And while it was a tragedy what happened to Walton’s body, being Bill Walton’s forever franchise was, in some ways, a championship that Portland kept winning every time he was on TV. On Monday, the entire world lost.
For me, Walton the player was a legend that only my Dad had seen. He even told me stories about playing in pick-up games with Walton at Portland State, a way for the Blazers to stay in shape in an age without Instagram Trainers, with my Dad at 6-3 having to be stuck guarding him, since he was usually one of the taller players at his games.
What strikes me about talking to people like my Dad who watched the ‘77 team is how few words they used. Even decades later, he had trouble explaining it. A magical event that can only be expressed through old game footage, with words doing little to translate the feeling. BlazerMania as an idea and a moment couldn’t be explained. The movie “Fast Break” has great game footage and interview footage with Walton, but Walton himself at the time had trouble expressing himself. For as much of a huge moment it is in franchise history, the distance and lack of footage make it feel so far way. And with Walton’s passing, it feels even further.
Walton the broadcaster, however, was everything to me. He was the Yin and Charles Barkley the Yang. While Barkley could hilariously roast the modern player and make me cry with laughter, Walton’s celebration of the game’s evolution, the awe with which he enjoyed the subtleties of Boris Diaw, for example, spoke to the part of me that sees basketball as an art-form that is constantly improved but never perfected. Even though he worked for ESPN, Walton never engaged in debates over which era was best. The present was forever the best life and basketball had to offer.
Walton saw the game, not simply as an athletic competition, which of course it was, but also as an expression of how great we can be when we choose to work together towards a common goal. In many ways, the Dallas Mavericks right now are the perfect expression of this: two mercurial personalities in Kyrie and Luka have learned to embrace each other’s complexities and trust each other without reservation, turning in one of the most unlikely one-year runs we’ve seen in league history, becoming an unstoppable symphony led by two basketball geniuses, finding itself one win away from the Finals as a 5-seed. It seems to be taken for granted that Boston will beat them in the Finals, but the beauty of the game is that there is no such thing as a sure thing. The unpredictable, the adventure, is always on the other side.
When my Dad was in hospice, I remember talking with him and being scared that I was going to lose him. All I could do was cry and cry while holding his hand. We had our stretches of going without talking and our relationship wasn’t perfect, but when he was winding down, I saw him almost every day. “When all this is over, I can’t wait for my next adventure,” I remember my Dad saying to me. That was how West Coast men of that generation, he and Walton, looked at life. Circumstances were temporary. Another adventure always awaits.
On this side, all we can do is look back at the memories and apply the lessons we learned here in the present. And of course, say thank you. Another adventure always awaits.
The World Remembering Bill
ESPN did an amazing job on Monday covering Walton. Malika Andrews did a particularly great job in her interview with Dave Pasch, Walton’s broadcast partner for the last few years at ESPN. Pasch has also been sharing some text messages from Walton over the years, which are a delight as well. Michael Wilbon’s video essay obituary about Walton was also excellent. While I’m pretty hard on ESPN about some of their editorial decisions, they knocked their Walton coverage out of the park. The documentary “The Luckiest Guy In The World” on ESPN+ is also excellent.
Bill Oram’s column for The Oregonian was a great tribute. Jason Quick’s obituary for The Athletic was similarly so. Read both if you can.
My colleague Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report unlocked his deep dive into Walton’s trade request for the Blazers in 1978, something Walton later said was the “toughest decision of his life” because the Blazers were “his franchise.”
I mentioned the documentary “Fast Break” above. Shoutout to former Willamette Week editor Matthew Singer for mentioning that movie is available to stream now on YouTube. I saw it once at the Hollywood Theater when they had a screening about 10 years ago. There are a lot of Walton interviews from the time, as well as tremendous game footage of the Western Conference Finals battle between Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem, like many in the basketball world, had a touching tribute to Walton on Monday.