What Was Bill Walton Doing in 1985?

January 5, 1985
Seven Months Before Red Pulled the Trigger on the Walton-for-Maxwell Deal

There were four little Waltons fluttering around their father's locker when he came out of the shower. They greeted him with tales of the hot dogs they had eaten and the funny faces they had made, and they asked him for a basketball to play with, too. Bill Walton understood the need. Indeed, maybe no one has ever understood it better.

One day Adam, Nate, Luke and Chris Walton will grow up to realize that. When their ages no longer range from 9 to 3, they will hear the stories of how the man who begot them might have been the greatest center in history if his body hadn't betrayed him. And perhaps they will remember winter nights like this one, when Bill Walton battled to regain just a fraction of what fate stole from him, battled until he was completely drained.

"Nate," he said wearily, "would you get some cans of beer and put them in my bag?"

The order was filled posthaste.

"Thanks," said Walton, a mischievous smile flickering across his face. ''That'll get me to midnight."

He works up a thirst for the Los Angeles Clippers now, a team that is better than anything its checkered past in San Diego might lead you to expect, but still little more than a fly for the Boston Celtics to swat. And that is what the Celtics had done by 15 points after shaking hands with Jack Nicholson at courtside and waving to Mike Warren of "Hill Street Blues" in the high- priced seats. The lords of the NBA wove a fast-break tapestry, leaving Walton to marvel at their handiwork.

"That doesn't come from playing together, that comes from winning together," he said. "A lot of teams play together, but when you win a championship, you all look to do it yourselves, and if you can't, you have the confidence that your teammates can."

Championship spirit unquenched

It was that way in Portland in '77, when the Trail Blazers were the power and Walton was the glory. And you could tell he hasn't forgotten the feeling even when the Clippers were getting waxed by the Celtics eight seasons later. His Clydesdale stride was still proud, his jaw was still thrust forward defiantly, his eyes still burned with the fire inside him. He didn't back up an inch whether he was blocking Cedric Maxwell's driving layup in the opening minutes or fighting for a three-point play when the Clippers had no hope. Both times the lip-readers in the L.A. Sports Arena saw him deliver the same message: "Come on, come on!"

This was the Bill Walton that Clippers coach Jim Lynam always heard about when he talked with his friend and mentor, Jack Ramsay - the Walton who certified Ramsay's tactical genius in Portland. "Jack used to say Bill was such a competitor that he liked road games more than home games," Lynam says. ''I guess Bill just loved the struggle."

Walton had no choice, really. If he hadn't been willing to struggle, he would have lost basketball forever. "The only things I love more are my wife and family," he says, "and they didn't even used to be up there."

The future outweighs the past

He is 32, a fine age for anyone to get his priorities in order. But anyone who insists on telling that to the world should add that his outlook on life may be better because he no longer fears that his next step in basketball shoes will be his last one.

"I spend most of my time now thinking about my next game," Walton says, ''not the games I couldn't play in."

Perhaps the load of the past would be too much, for he was a budding NBA tragedy that couldn't be traced to drugs or profligate spending or agents who weren't worth the dotted lines they had him signing. True, he hung out with what people in high places thought was the wrong crowd and he was embarrassingly capable of saying the wrong thing. But he was young and headstrong, and at last glance, neither of those qualities was a felony.

Where Walton was concerned, the real crime involved his underpinnings. He had feet that wouldn't support the 235 pounds strung over his 6-11 frame. Every time he took a step, you were afraid of hearing a bone crumble like a potato chip. In the best seasons he has ever had, Walton still could have been Blue Cross-Blue Shield's poster boy. There were 17 missed games on his report card the year Portland won the title and 24 when he was the NBA's Most Valuable Player the year after. Then he became a missing person.

In three of the next four seasons, Walton played nary a minute. In the fourth, he got into 14 games. No wonder everybody started to speak of him in the past tense. "In late '80 and all of '81," he says, "the doctors said I had no chance of playing basketball again, or even participating in any sport of any kind."

Operation gave hope

Out of the hopelessness, however, came hope. There was an operation - Walton's fifth and most daring - and it left him with a restructured left foot and the chance for the comeback that began two seasons ago. The pain it involved was nothing. "I'd already known pain," Walton says. The patience required of him was something else again. "I couldn't play back-to-back games," he said. "I could only play every other game, and that was very unsettling to my feel for what was happening out there." Worst of all, it left him with a question that only action could answer.

"In the past, whenever I got started to play again, I was always concerned about being injured again," he said. "I'm still concerned, but I had to get over having the possibility of another injury preoccupying my basketball thoughts. I have to do my playing and thinking without hesitation."

To the dismay of drama lovers, there was no grand moment when everything flowed once more for Walton. It just happened. He could feel the change welling inside him at the end of last season, when he needed no more games off. Then he had a healthy summer while playing pickup games with his fellow Clippers and old UCLA teammates. "That was the first time in seven years that I didn't have any major surgery or casting in the summer," he said. To celebrate, he smashed his mental block.

Now, more than a third of the way into the new season, Jim Lynam understands what Jack Ramsay meant when he talked about Walton loving the struggle. "Bill never let the dream die," Lynam said, "and that's all it was for a while - a dream."

Season's routine still not ideal

The reality doesn't always please Walton, of course. He can't practice enough to mesh smoothly with the Clippers' offense, and his adventures at forward have been limited by the inflamed tendon in his ankle that kept him out of the only two games he has missed. And deep down, there is something that perhaps will always gnaw at him: On the court, he will never be the real Bill Walton again.

There are too many years and scars on him for that. "I just have to learn to do the best with what I've got," he said. "I have to keep pushing." So he campaigns for more minutes of play since they are the coin of the realm, and he wants more chances to see if he can make Akeem Olajuwon, Houston's rookie prize, eat the basketball the way he did the first time they met. The hunger of old has been stirred again, and even on that unhappy night against the Celtics, it was there to offer a lesson to Walton's sons.

"Daddy," said 6-year-old Nate, "if you'd had four more points, you would have had the most points on the team."

Bill Walton tried to look as stern as he could wearing a Dance for Disarmament T-shirt. He forgot about the Grateful Dead music that is always playing in his mind, and he even tried to frown.

"If the team had had 16 more points," he said, "we would have won the game."

Father knows best.