Is Bill Walton an Empty Promise?

September 1, 1985

WALTON IS FULL OF TALENT, BUT IS HE AN EMPTY PROMISE?

No one is neutral on Bill Walton.

Walk into any sports saloon and the "Tastes Great" guys will tell you that Walton is one of the best centers who ever played, while the "Less Filling" guys will say Walton is a hypochondriac - an overrated counterculture con artist.



The Walton dossier is thick and filled with contradictions. He has played for two of the best basketball teams of all-time (1971-74 UCLA, 1977-79 Trail Blazers), but later endured a foot/ankle injury that forced him to miss 232 of 246 Clipper games from 1979-82.

Walton's personality has sparked almost as much commentary as his game. In his college days, he let his red hair grow into a pony tail, asked coach John Wooden for permission to smoke marijuana, and told his teammates they smelled bad because they ate red meat. When he joined the NBA, his first house in Portland, Ore., was monitered by the FBI because they thought his friend Jack Scott might know where then-fugitive Patty Hearst was.

Meanwhile, Walton entertained folks named Daniel Berrigan and John Froines (of the Chicago Seven) and did a gig as fill-in drummer for his favorite band, the Grateful Dead.

He was colorful, opinionated and hip . . . but he was also a 6-11 basketball franchise, and that's why people cared.

Recruited by the legendary Wooden after leading Helix High School to 49 consecutive wins, Walton was the dominant NCAA center of the 1970s. He was College Player of the Year three times while leading the Bruins to two national championships and an 86-4 record.

His next team, the Portland Trail Blazers, won the NBA championship in 1976-77, and Walton was MVP of the championship series.

Laker coach Pat Riley remembers this about the 1976-77 Bill Walton: "The year they won the championship, I thought that he could develop into the greatest center who ever played. He had the level of intensity and the super quickness. There's Russell, Chamberlain and Kareem, but he may have been the most complete player of all."

The vintage Walton was the best passing big man in NBA history. He played great team defense, fired the outlet pass with speed and precision, rebounded and took good percentage shots. He has always been a consummate team player, and the thought of Walton playing alongside Larry Bird has hoop purists drooling.

Injuries have played a major part in the Bill Walton Story since 1978. He was having his best pro season when he broke the tarsal navicular bone below his left ankle in 1978. The Blazers were an eye-popping 50-10 at the time but were later swept out of the play-offs in the first round with little help from a hobbling Walton. Walton took pain-killing shots and played on the broken foot in the play-offs, and later sued the Blazers for $5.6 million.

In May 1979 he signed a seven-year, $5 million (five years guaranteed) contract to play for the Clippers. Unfortunately, Walton played only 14 games in four seasons after sustaining the injury and appeared to be through when he missed the entire '80-81 and '81-82 seasons. There was frustration and doubt. The injury didn't show up on X-rays. Ex-Clipper (and Celtic) owner Irv Levin filed a $17 million suit against Walton, charging that Walton and two physicians misrepresented Walton's physical condition when he signed with the Clippers.

In the summer of 1982, while a full-time law student at Stanford, Walton noticed that the foot felt better. He began thinking about a comeback.

He played only 33 games in his first year back, but increased that to 55 games in 1983-84, and played in a career-high 67 games last season. He averaged 10.1 points and 8.9 rebounds.

His reconstructed left foot is sound, but new injuries have nagged him in the three seasons since his return. He had surgery for a bone spur in his right foot after the 1982-83 season and fractured a bone in his hand during the 1983-84 campaign. The Clippers tried to keep Walton under 30 minutes per game and tried to steer him clear of back-to-back games.

Now he is on the verge of becoming a Celtic, and Boston won't need him for 30 minutes per game. He can give Robert Parish some much-needed relief and fill in at the power forward slot. Walton will be 33 in November, but playing for the Celtics will probably prolong his career.

It's been a career marred by broken promise and broken bones, but Walton thinks playing for Boston with Larry Bird will enable him to go out the way he came in - on top.

When he returned to the NBA three years ago, he said, "My long-range goal is to play in the big games again."