WALTON WISDOM NEVER CEASES
SAN DIEGAN HAS OPINIONS ON NCAA, PAC-12 SUCCESS
Chatting with Bill Walton about the NCAA Tournament, at a time his beloved Pac-12 has gobbled up onequarter of the spots in the Sweet 16, is a bit like trying to guard the Hall of Famer during his playing days.
You can’t contain him. You can’t slow him down. He’s going to get his points … or in this case, make them.
“I want to make it very clear at the beginning that I support NCAA women’s basketball players in their ongoing struggles for equality,” Walton said. “And I support all NCAA athletes getting involved in the financial aspects and opportunities that initially was the name, image and likeness issue.
“I’m for everything that helps the players.”
No one would blame Walton for launching into a stump speech about the Pac-12’s 9-1 record in the men’s tournament without a single top-4 seed. He could effuse about Oregon manhandling second-seeded Iowa by 15 or USC embarrassing third-seeded Kansas by 34.
The San Diegan could dish out the statistical soup of KenPom.com that estimated the chances of Oregon, UCLA and Oregon State making the Sweet 16 at 15.6, 9.5 and 9.4 percent. Focus, though, is not always Walton’s thing. His world view is far too enormous to lock into narrow conversations.
The points keep coming.
“The Loyola of Chicago story is absolutely joyful and joyous,” Walton said of the Sweet 16 gate-crashers and senior Cameron Krutwig, who looks like he’s on the way to the nearest bowling alley. “They have a whole team full of Steve Nashes with Dave Cowens in the center.” He’s just warming up.
“Everybody’s reaching out to me, ‘Bill, you’ve got to check out that Caitlin Clark from Iowa,’ ” Walton said of the freshman sharpshooter who leads the country in scoring at 26.8 points per game. “The women’s tournament is just spectacular. Stanford is as fun a watch, men or women, as there is in basketball today.”
Walton pivots to the looming Oregon-USC men’s matchup Sunday night.
“That’s going to be spectacular,” he said. “That should be a Final Four game. Why that game is in the round of 16, it’s a disgrace. Somebody’s not doing their job. All it takes is to look down the bracket, ‘Hey, you can’t have two schools from the same conference playing each other in the early rounds.’
“Somebody allowed that to happen. To have the top two teams in the league playing each in the Round of 16,
it’s mind-boggling.”
Then there’s Oregon State, the 12th-seeded shockers who lost a home game against Arizona in January by 34 points.
“The Beavers easily could have quit, folded the tent and said it’s over,” Walton said. “They responded magnificently. They’re a fantastic story.”
The UCLA alum who works as a broadcaster for Pac-12 Network and ESPN rushes to catch up to his racing mind.
The frustration about inequities in the women’s game, pushed into the national spotlight when images of a laughable “weight room” caught fire on social media, has Walton seething. Thirty-six members of Congress wrote to NCAA President Mark Emmert about the shameful disparities at the tournaments.
“That breaks my heart,” Walton said. “These ladies are so good. This is just a grossly negligent oversight. And oversight might be the wrong word. It’s a terrible mistake. I’m glad so many people have spoken up about it. Change will not come until people speak up.”
Asked why the Pac-12 was able to hijack the thunder of the Big Ten and it’s nine teams in the men’s tournament, Walton spinmoves to a one-liner.
“We are the Conference of Champions,” he said. “There are no truck stops in our conference.”
The conversation beelines toward his love of Alabama coach Nate Oats and Arkansas counterpart Eric Musselman. He gushes about the late run orchestrated by UCLA’s Mick Cronin. He expresses shock that Gonzaga’s Mark Few, Oregon’s Dana Altman and retiring Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger are not in the Hall of Fame.
Eventually, Walton takes a breath. You pounce.
What about your wild and polarizing broadcast style?
“I’m Bill,” he says simply. “In the game of life, there’s a lot going on.”
Walton redirects the back-and-mostly-forth to rave about health care workers. He received his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine Moderna.
The final shot slowed him … if only briefly.
“A little bit of fatigue, headache, feeling rundown,” Walton explained. “I took a day of rest. I’m great. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Can’t wait for the games this weekend.”
Then the conversation ends. You look up and still have all your timeouts. It’s hard to use them when Walton is piling up the points.