Walton gets back up, returns to TV
Bill Walton’s life has taken plenty of twists. The latest might be his greatest.
In a move to be formally announced today, Walton will rejoin ESPN/ABC, where he’d been the lead NBA analyst before he collapsed in an airport in 2007.
“My spine failed after a lifetime of spine problems,” Walton told USA TODAY Sports by phone Sunday. “My life was over. I spent three years on the floor.”
Literally. He couldn’t really move much and says he was sometimes suicidal. But this season he’ll call ESPN Pac-12 games as the network — through a new deal — expands its coverage of the league. Walton also will join the conference’s soonto-launch regional network and will do occasional Sacramento Kings local game broadcasts.
After 36 orthopedic surgeries, he has fused ankles and a fused spine.
“And my knees, hands and wrists don’t work,” he said. “Other than that, everything is fine. I’m doing great. I’m starting over. I’m excited as can be about tomorrow. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
He sounds like he means it. Asked how often he’ll work games, he sounds as if he’s not sure or doesn’t care or both — “I’ll just say that some will say I’ll do too many and others will say too few.” And he isn’t worried about whom he’ll work with on-air: “That’s jumping way ahead.” He’s focused on a bigger picture. “How do you go back and thank the people who saved your life? My life was over. Now, I’m rebuilding my life.” And “spending every free nanosecond” on his bike. Which is “my wheelchair, my gym, my church,” he says.
Walton says his spine problems began when, as a UCLA star, he was undercut in a game at Washington State in 1974. He spent 11 days in the hospital but rushed back for a game at Notre Dame — where the Irish ended an 88-game Bruins winning streak. In retrospect, does he wish he’d stayed in bed? “Hey, we had a game,” he said. “And we let Coach (John) Wooden down so much. The stain and stigma on my soul from that, I’ll never be able to cleanse.”
Walton really talks like that. But then, this is someone who ended up as an announcer who only spoke to a handful of people by phone — Wooden, his parents, UCLA teammate Greg Lee and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia — until he overcame stuttering in his mid-20s.
And talk he did. As NBC’s lead NBA analyst and later on ESPN/ABC’s NBA coverage, he offered vintage Waltonisms such as declaring Shaquille O’Neal to be “one of the five biggest people on the planet” — as though you could look it up on this week’s rankings.
Asked about his physical rehab, Walton quibbles with the semantics. “You can never look at it as physical therapy — it’s life.”
He remembers the anesthesia kicking in when he had his game-changing 2009 operation and grabbing his surgeon to say, “Please help me. Please give me a chance to ride my bike again.”
“I got it, and I can’t stop smiling.”
Spice rack: Political operative James Carville, on ABC’S This Week on Sunday, said the Penn State scandal was “awful, gut-wrenching.” But he doesn’t think the school’s football program should get the death penalty. “That’s a really dumb idea. Lives have been ruined. So the answer to it, let’s go out and ruin more lives?”