Invoice Walton, a basketball middle whose abnormal passing and rebounding abilities helped him win two nationwide school championships with U.C.L.A. and one every with the Portland Path Blazers and the Boston Celtics of the N.B.A., and who overcame a stutter to turn out to be a loquacious broadcast commentator, died on Monday at his house in San Diego. He was once 71.
The N.B.A. mentioned the purpose was once most cancers.
A redheaded hippie and trustworthy Thankful Useless fan, Walton was once a 6-foot-11 acolyte of the famend U.C.L.A. schoolteacher John Wood and anchored the Bruins workforce that gained N.C.A.A. championships in 1972 and 1973, alongside the way in which extending an 88-game profitable streak that started in 1971. He was once named the nationwide school participant of the day thrice.
Walton’s largest contest was once the 1973 nationwide championship in opposition to Memphis Situation, performed in St. Louis. He were given into foul bother within the first part, however went on to attain a report 44 issues on 21-for-22 taking pictures and had 11 rebounds in U.C.L.A.’s 87-66 victory. It was once the college’s 9th identify in 10 years.
Walton — now not but identified for his continuously hyperbolic, stream-of-consciousness talking means — refused to mention a lot nearest the sport. As he left the store room, he advised journalists: “Excuse me, I want to go meet my friends. I’m splitting.”
He performed another day at U.C.L.A. earlier than Portland decided on him first general within the 1974 N.B.A. draft. He weathered accidents, two shedding seasons below Trainer Lenny Wilkens and complaint over his vegetarian vitamin and his crimson ponytail and beard earlier than profitable the 1977 championship below Trainer Jack Ramsay.
“I think Jack Ramsay reached Walton,” Eddie Donovan, the Knicks’ basic supervisor on the pace, advised the Fresh York Occasions columnist Dave Anderson. “Of all the coaches in our league, Jack Ramsay is the closest to being the John Wooden type — scholarly, available. I think Walton responded to that.”
However the query that lingered all the way through Walton’s N.B.A. profession was once how just right he would were if now not for his many accidents. Higher than Invoice Russell? Wilt Chamberlain? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one in every of his predecessors at U.C.L.A.?
Walton by no means performed greater than 70 video games in a season — even within the 1977-78 season, when he was once named maximum significance participant, he performed in simply 58 video games — and he overlooked 3 complete seasons (1978-79, 1980-81 and 1981-82).
“When I’m healthy,” he mentioned early in his Portland profession, “I play real good, I think.”
He was once requested whether or not somebody had clear the actual Invoice Walton.
“I don’t think so,” he mentioned.
He had a knee shock as a young person all over a park contest. However, as he wrote in one in every of his memoirs, “Back From the Dead: Searching for the Sound, Shining the Light and Throwing It Down” (2016), it was once “my malformed feet — my faulty foundation, which led to the endless string of stress fractures which ultimately brought on the whole mess I’m in now.”
He underwent just about 40 orthopedic surgical procedures, most commonly on his toes and ankles.
“My feet were not built to last — or to play basketball,” he wrote. “My skeletal, structural foundation — inflexible and rigid — could not absorb the endless stress and impact of running, jumping, turning, twisting and pounding for 26 years.”
A complete obituary will seem in a while.
