Bill Walton: From Patty Hearst to the Greatful Dead

September 13, 1985

Bill Walton: From Patty Hearst to the Greatful Dead -- This Should be an Interesting Ride

He somehow seems to be a friend from another time, a face at a college reunion. He is a stranger, yet he is familiar. Very familiar. The red hair. The voice. The long-man, tall-man body.

"Aren't you . . . ?" you want to say.

Sure he is.

"Didn't you . . . ?"

Sure he did.

"What about Patty Hearst?"

Um. Never mind.



He is not an old man - heck he is only 32 - 33 in two months - but somehow he seems to come from long ago. He is here to play basketball, but there is more to him than that. A simple basketball player would be a simple story, another guy on the treadmill through a town and a team. Bill Walton somehow is more personal.

He mentions in his introductory press conference yesterday afternoon in the eighth-floor office of Boston Celtics that he has four kids, all boys. Two already are in school in the area. Two will be finding schools in the next few days. He already has found a house. He is settled.

"Good that you're coming from California," you say. "That's the only way you could make the shift without losing money. The only place with housing prices like Massachusetts is California."

What kind of sports page question is that?

"The one good thing about the high prices is that you can sell your house for high prices," Bill Walton says. "I made out all right."

There is an overriding urge to talk about stuff. Not basketball. Stuff. Other stuff. The newsreel churns inside the mind and Jimi Hendrix plays a guitar and a Maharishi speaks and there is a picture of violence from Kent State and Nixon resigns and where is Patty Hearst and the action stops somehwere in the middle and Bill Walton is there with his pony tail and the same smile.

He did not graduate from college until 1974, but somehow he is remembered as the '60s. The '60s were sloppy. They spilled over into the '70s. He was there. He was a part of all that, a hook. He was a sports hook on the time, the biggest sports hook of all.

"How'd you wear your hair during that time?" you ask M.L. Carr, the recently retired Celtic, another child of the time.

"I had the Afro," M.L. says. "The b-i-i-i-g Afro. Everybody did. Remember Julius Erving? B-i-i-i-g Afro. I had the big Afro and a moustache and a beard. Then I shaved away part of the beard so I could have those sideburns. The big ones? You look at the pictures and just laugh."

Time has moved forward with such a jolt that you wonder about Walton. What has happened with him? There are so many toothless old lions from that time, found in the strangest of places. Where is Jerry Rubin? Working on Wall Street? Abby Hoffman? Isn't he in business, too? There was a rock and roll song on the radio only yesterday and the disc jockey said the lyrics had been written by Angela Davis. Angela Davis? The revolutionary? Writing songs? Every day there is another story about another radical who is working as a corporate lawyer, defending some monolith in a case involving pollution.

Where does Walton fit? How much baggage from that time has he carried with him? How much has he set down by the side of the road as he has continued through those NBA seasons and added all the complications of adult living?

"Is that a Grateful Dead T shirt you're wearing?" a woman asks.

"Yes, it is," he says with a smile, fingering the top of the shirt. "One of the few negatives about coming here is that the Dead was playing this weekend in San Diego and we're going to miss it. I'm sure the boys will be through here, though, and we'll get a chance to see them."

"Are you still a vegetarian?"

"No," he says. "I haven't been a vegetarian for a while. We still believe in good nutrition, eating good foods, but we do eat meat on occasion."

There are a few political questions at the conference, but not many. He answers with the diplomacy of someone halfway through Stanford Law School. Which he is. He says he is happy to be in Massachusetts, that he thinks the political climate should be fine. He rightly remembers that Massachusetts was the one state that voted for George McGovern. He wrongly remembers that it voted for Walter Mondale.

"What would happen if the Celtics win the championship and you're invited to the White House to meet Ronald Reagan?" he is asked. "Would you go?"

"I . . . I think I'll just stay away from that question," he says. "Let's just say, I hope that I am around to have the reason for the invitation."

He seems relaxed, happy. Happy? He seems overjoyed. The picture in all the "Big Chill" movies might show idealism exchanged for dollars, but he does not seem to fit that. He has exchanged dollars here for a chance to win a basketball title. He says that over and over again. He would like to play good basketball. He would like to win a title.

"Has there ever been a night like the night you shot 21 for 22 and won an NCAA title?" you ask. "Is that the ideal, something always to go for?"

"That was not just me on that night," Bill Walton says. "That was our team. Memphis State came in with a game plan that challenged me to do it, to make the shot. I was open, so I took it. I remember Memphis had called a timeout once and our point guard said to (coach) John Wooden that we had run the same play to me for five, six, seven straight times and maybe we should change. Uh-uh. Coach Wooden said to just keep going there until Memphis changed its defense. Memphis never changed."

You listen to this and you remember. Was there ever a better individual game played by anyone? On any level? You think of all the time that has passed - time that seems so much longer than it really has been - and you think of Walton, the kid, and you look at Walton, the man. The familiar stranger.

"My goal," he says, "is to play basketball for as long as I can."

You wish him well.