Hall of Fame center Bill Walton, who helped the Celtics win a title, dies after cancer battle - The Boston Globe (2024)

Then, they stopped.

He would spend most of the next seven seasons either playing in agony or not playing at all. Foot and ankle injuries rendered the player — known for his brilliant passes, intense defending, and instinctive understanding of the game of basketball — a spectator most of the time.

Yet, for Mr. Walton, his most treasured time on the court was still to come.

In 1985, the 32-year-old player was obtained in a trade by Red Auerbach from the San Diego Clippers and joined the Boston Celtics.

“I never had a better time playing,” Mr. Walton wrote in his biography, ‘Nothing But Net.’ “Aside from winning, my favorite moments on the court came when I was out there with Larry Bird. It’s safe to say our styles were complementary.”

Playing as a backup to Hall of Fame center Robert Parish, Mr. Walton would help Parish, Bird, and the rest of the team win another NBA title. For his contributions, he was honored with the league’s Sixth Man of the Year Award, which is presented to the top player who comes off the bench.

Mr. Walton called the award “my greatest personal playing accomplishment.”

The Hall of Fame center — a free-styling, bike-riding, Grateful Dead-loving iconoclast off the court who would become a beloved broadcast analyst and announcer — died Monday, the NBA announced. Mr. Walton, who had a prolonged struggle with cancer, was 71.

Mr. Walton leaves his wife, Lori, and sons Adam, Nate, Chris, and Luke — a former NBA player and now a coach.

“Bill Walton was one of the most consequential players of his era. A Hall of Famer, Most Valuable Player, and two-time NBA Champion, Walton could do it all, possessing great timing, complete vision of the floor, excellent fundamentals, and was of one of the greatest passing big men in league history,” the Celtics said via a team statement. “He derived great joy from basketball and music, and deeply cherished his moments with teammates and friends.

“As a Celtic, Bill overcame years of debilitating injuries, regained his zest for the game, and helped guide the 1986 Boston Celtics championship with both his play and his spirit.”

“Bill Walton enjoyed life in every way,” Julius “Dr. J” Erving, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as Mr. Walton, wrote on social media. “To compete against him and to work with him was a blessing in my life.”

William Theodore Walton III was larger than life, on the court and off.

His most famous collegiate game was the 1973 NCAA title game, UCLA against Memphis, in which he shot an incredible 21 for 22 from the field and led the Bruins to another national championship.

They kept giving the ball to Mr. Walton, and he kept delivering in a performance for the ages.

“It’s very hard to put into words what he has meant to UCLA’s program, as well as his tremendous impact on college basketball,” UCLA coach Mick Cronin said Monday. “Beyond his remarkable accomplishments as a player, it’s his relentless energy, enthusiasm for the game and unwavering candor that have been the hallmarks of his larger than life personality.”

After Mr. Walton retired from the NBA, he turned to broadcasting, something he never thought he could be good at — he had a pronounced stutter at times in his life.

Turns out, he was excellent at that, too: Mr. Walton was an Emmy winner, eventually was named one of the top 50 sports broadcasters of all time by the American Sportscasters Association and even appeared on The New York Times’ bestseller list for his memoir, “Back from the Dead.” It told the story of a debilitating back injury suffered in 2008, one that left him considering taking his own life because of the constant pain, and how he spent years recovering.

“In life, being so self-conscious, red hair, big nose, freckles and goofy, nerdy-looking face and can’t talk at all. I was incredibly shy and never said a word,” Mr. Walton told The Oregonian newspaper in 2017. “Then, when I was 28 I learned how to speak (with tips on how to overcome his stuttering from New York Knicks broadcaster Marty Glickman). It’s become my greatest accomplishment of my life and everybody else’s biggest nightmare.”

The last part of that was just Walton hyperbole. He was beloved for his on-air tangents, sometimes appeared on-air in Grateful Dead T-shirts.

Yet it was on the court that a healthy Mr. Walton shined most brilliantly.

“My teammates ... made me a much better basketball player than I could ever have become myself,” he said at his Hall of Fame speech in 1993. “The concept of team has always been the most intriguing aspect of basketball to me.”

He also considered himself fortunate to have been guided by two of the game’s greatest minds in Wooden and Auerbach.

“Thank you John, and thank you Red, for making my life what it has become,” said Mr. Walton, also a member of both the NBA’s 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary teams.

He had considered Bill Russell his favorite player and found Bird the toughest and best he played with, so it was appropriate that his playing career ended as a member of the Celtics. “Playing basketball with Larry Bird,” Mr. Walton once said, “is like singing with Jerry Garcia,” referencing the co-founder of the Grateful Dead.

In “The Luckiest Guy in the World,” a four-part documentary on Mr. Walton, producer Steve James related that Bird had said Mr. Walton, when healthy, played the game as well as anybody.

“When Larry Bird said that, I mean, Larry Bird is not a guy who just throws around compliments,” James told The Athletic. “When he said he was one of the best ever, I said: ‘Centers?’

“And he said, ‘No. Players.’”

Mr. Walton almost never made onto the court with the Celtics. As he relayed in an interview with Yahoo! in 2016, it took an overruling of doctors by Auerbach.

“There’s no way I’d ever been able to pass a physical,” Mr. Walton said, describing the scene in 1985 after he was traded. “The doctors are all looking at my X-rays. . . . And then Red, he bursts in through the double doors at Mass. General Hospital there at the east end of Storrow Drive. And he’s smoking his cigar in the hospital, and he walks in and says, ‘Who are you guys and what are you doing with my player?’ And they’re saying, ‘Red, come here. Look at this. Look at his feet. Look at his face. We can’t pass this guy.’ And Red says, ‘Shut up. I’m in charge here.’

Auerbach turned to Mr. Walton and asked him a simple question: Can you still play?

“And I looked up at him, and I said, ‘Red, I think I can. I think I can, Red.’

“And Red took a step back, folded his arms, and took a drag on that cigar. Oh my gosh. And he held that smoke in as long as he possibly could, and you could just see all the machinations going on, all the calculations, all the deliberations as to how this is all going to play out. Finally he just exhaled.

“And Red, through the smoke, with a big, cherubic grin on his face, looked at the doctors, looked at me, and he said, ‘He’s fine. He passes. Let’s go. We’ve got a game.’”

Michael Bailey of the Globe staff contributed to this obituary, which also used material from the Associated Press