May the Four Winds Blow You Safely Home

Reflecting on the life of Bill Walton, basketball legend and Grateful Dead fan extraordinaire.

On Monday, May 27th Bill Walton passed away at the age of 71 after suffering (unbeknownst to us) from cancer.

It’s perhaps a bit silly for me, someone who never watched Bill Walton play live, to be writing about this. It’s a bit extreme for me to feel bad about this person I never knew and who had retired well before I was an astute follower of the NBA.

And yet I am.

Why is that?

One reason is pretty obvious to the astute reader of this newsletter—he’s probably the biggest Grateful Dead fan and, more specifically, the biggest athlete-as-Grateful Dead fan. That is a point that has been made by many, many writers (and you can read about that here and here), so I won’t belabor it.

But how can I not love a basketball player who also loves one of my favorite bands? Walton was such a notable and exuberant supporter of the band that many would probably be forgiven for thinking that Walton was a member of the group.

I also love that Walton equated what the Dead did, what made them special, and what basketball played at the highest level was like:

It’s very similar, particularly with a big band like the Grateful Dead that often has six players and a basketball team, which has five players. The game starts, the music starts, and everybody has a goal, a dream, a thought and a hope of how it’s going to play out. But everybody is going in their own direction and thinking about what their own little deal is. You have to have sacrifice, discipline, leadership and all the aspects that come into a group dynamic. Sometimes you have to pull it right back in—the mind grooves, the mind games and the mental stimulation. There is the physical aspect—you’re being bombarded with all of this energy from the crowd, and it’s driving you and pushing you—and you think you’re tired, and they never let you stop and thank goodness they don’t.

Basketball and music work well together—basketball can be like jazz, like hip hop, but also… whatever the Grateful Dead are (rock? folk? blues? jam?). It’s why one of my biggest frustrations is when people talk about teams and how one player is “Batman” and another is “Robin.” That’s not the dynamic, that’s not how basketball works. I think we should talk about if players are “Lennon” or “McCartney”; “Jagger” or “Richards”; and, yes, “Garcia” or “Weir” or “Lesh.” This is something that Walton understood and probably made him as great a player as he was. He wasn’t thinking “I need to be the ultimate alpha Batman player.” He was thinking “within this collaborative medium, I need to be the best Bill Walton I can be while also making sure my teammates are in a position to succeed too.” Jerry Garcia was a singular talent. But if it’s just Jerry putting on sonic pyrotechnics… that group isn’t that special. That Garcia could do all those things, and certain things in particular, along with his other band members… that’s what made the Dead special. Walton understood that. And for that reason alone, and what he did in articulating it, I will always revere him.

Related—here’s a good Dead show from Portland in 1977 (the year Walton and the Trail Blazers won the NBA championship).

Though I only saw Walton play basketball retrospectively, his game and what he stood for was something I appreciate. When I was a lot younger, I was still taller than my peers; therefore, I was a pretty good basketball player and one who approached the game from the big man’s perspective. Those were the players who I looked towards and idolized.

Even as I stopped growing and everyone else caught up, I was still drawn to the big men in basketball. Most of my favorite non-Warriors players are big men (I loved the David Robinson-Tim Duncan Spurs, Joel Embiid is probably my favorite non-Warriors player in the game today). The way I tried to play was the big man who could do everything, not just putting the ball in the basket. Defense, passing, making smart plays. It’s why I loved watching Tim Duncan play. It’s why I think so highly of Draymond Green. That was who, if I was a basketball player, I wanted to be. Who I knew I could be. Do the smart think, the little thing, that leads to success.

Walton was that kind of player. Yes, he could pour in the points (especially when he was in college—he scored 44 points on 21-22 from the field in the 1973 NCAA Championship). But he also loved to grab rebounds, block shots, push the pace with a crisp outlet pass. His performance in the championship-clinching Game 6 of the 1977 NBA Finals is a perfect example of this: 20 points, 23 rebounds, 7 assists, 8 blocks.

As someone who came of age as a basketball fan in the 1990s, I was very familiar with Walton as a color commentator and I was always a fan. He made you laugh. He made you see things in the game and grasp what was going on. He was distinct, he was unique.

Unlike a lot of people you hear broadcasting games now, it was clear Walton loved the game of basketball. That was something that continued into his run as the biggest voice in the world of Pac-12 (R.I.P) hoops.

I think the word you think of with Walton, whether you were already thinking it or it’s what you’ve heard from those who knew him reflecting on this life, is joy. An amazing thing, given the struggles with physical pain Walton underwent most all of his life. But the man was… pure light. He was the good.

Sportswriter Jack McCallum made an excellent point:

People loved Walton, whether they knew him or (like me) didn’t. That’s a sign that this was someone who radiated a joy, a positivity, that everyone responded to. I think the basketball discourse gets too self-serious and dour for its own good these days. What we’re missing are the people like Bill Walton. Someone who saw the beauty in this game and sought to articulate it. The joy. The fun. The potential. I want to approach basketball, hell, I want to approach life like Bill Walton. I think we’d all be better off if more people did.