GREAT article about Bill Walton in today's NYT Magazine

i remember hating this dude because he and Tom Heinsohn would just go on and on about Hakeem for being a hothead and immature, even when he was lighting teams up for 30 points. To Walton's credit, he finally started giving Dream his respect in the championship years and he was positive about him from then on.

Walton just has such a strong possibility that you love him or hate him. But this article makes it clearer why he is the way he is. Health troubles can wreck anyone psychologically, and the way he's handled it has been admirable.

 

Walton is prone to hyperbole, but he knows how the game should be played. The fact that his son had an NBA career at all given his average(for a basketball player) physical attributes, is a testament of how he understood the game.

 

While I have so many reasons not to like Bill Walton, I love Bill Walton.

He knows the game. But more importantly, he knows the truth of life. He's always in the moment when he is with you. And he absorbs that moment in such a way that he can relate it to something bigger and more important in life. You would think he's a talker because he never shuts up, but he's a listener. He absorbs everything around him. So much positive energy. I can listen to him talk for hours and when I'm done, I have rethought my relationships with my parents and life with new perspective.

 

failure of his spine?

I never realized he had back issues. I always thought he was plagued with feet/leg issues.

He annoyed me growing up, but since he left the NBA broadcasting world, I have kinda missed the "throw it down, big man, throw it down."

 

Walton is 500x better than Mark Jackson

THROW IT DOWN