RIP: Bill Walton passes away at the age of 71

I don’t even remember who preceded Bill Walton on the NBA on NBC broadcasts throughout the 90s, but when I had really gotten into basketball, my memories of watching hoops always had the voice of Marv Albert and someone else in it.  Maybe it was Paul Westphal or Doug Collins, I don’t remember, but what I do remember is when Bill Walton joined Marv Albert behind the desk, and the two of them commentated on some of the greatest games of basketball I’ve ever watched.

I didn’t know really anything about Bill Walton when he took over the broadcasting duties, except for the fact that he was a former NBA player from yesteryear.  I didn’t know that he was some beatnik hippie player who played for the Portland Trailblazers and the Boston Celtics, and I frankly didn’t know anything about his career, playstyle or any remote idea of his general numbers.  The internet didn’t really exist then, much less have an online database where I can satiate any curiosity of any player of any time in history these days.

Honestly, at first, I found Walton to be kind of obnoxious, from his nasal-ey voice, tendency to go off on tangents about things that weren’t basketball, and inject a little too much opinion and editorial into his commentating style.  I didn’t need to hear about the famines in Sri Lanka, while I’m sitting at the edge of my seat watching Patrick Ewing trying to come out victorious over the Indiana Pacers.  I didn’t need to hear about how he was happier being the greatest sixth man ever for the Celtics instead of being the star in Portland when I was amped up watching Anfernee Hardaway prepare for some last second heroics against the Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets.

But as the years passed, the sound of Bill Walton grew into a familiar comfort, and as I grew older and my general brain began to expand, the things he would drone on and on about during the span of a basketball game became entertaining.  Especially when while he was doing it, Marv Albert was being the studious straight man calling the action to the book, along with his iconic YESSSS calls whenever Michael Jordan drilled a fadeaway in John Starks’ face.

One of my favorite Bill Walton cliches, before the phrase meme even came into existence, were all the times throughout the decade where Walton would make remarks or insinuations that he was a better center than Shaquille O’Neal.  Which was laughable, considering Walton was a lanky white guy who excelled at set play team basketball while Shaq was probably the single greatest dominating physical force in the history of the game, but it never stopped old Bill Walton from trying to hint that he was always a better player than him, mostly because of his superior free throw percentage and ability to pass the ball.

My friends and I would often do bad impressions of Bill Walton whenever we talked hoops, and it always boiled down to a caricature quote of him saying:

I know a better center than Shaq.  Me.

Oh and how we ended up loving Bill Walton in the end.  Eventually, NBC would foolishly lose the license to the NBA, and it would be quite some time before Bill Walton would be back in the booth with any regularity, and by then, I had already long phased out of my love for hoops, the NBA and having time in general to watch basketball.

But I have memories as recent as just a few years ago, of where Bill Walton was doing some guest commentary during a college basketball game, and in true classic Bill Walton, the man would just not shut the fuck up about topics that had to do with anything other than basketball, like some of the turmoil going on in Syria or some other third world country.  The guy doing the play-by-play was probably getting annoyed, but I definitely was enjoying it the whole time, because despite the fact that time had aged and eroded Bill Walton physically, he was still the same beatnik underneath it all, and his past basketball accolades always got him in the door to be on television to talk about absolutely anything but basketball; during basketball games.

At 71 years of age, the man had lived a fairly full life, close to general life expectancy.  Probably a lot of the psychedelic drugs he did as a devout Dead Head probably shaved a few years off, but it’s probably hard to argue that he didn’t live his life to the fullest.  It does make me sad to learn that the greatest living center is no longer among us, and he clearly impacted my life to the point where his passing warrants a post in the brog.

Happy trails, Bill Walton – you certainly were a better center than Shaq was, at quite a few things.