COMEBACK OF NEAL WALK : Ex-NBA Player Does ‘Two-Step’ With the Intention That He Will Someday Be Able to Walk Again

Neal Walk, who had a journeyman’s career in the National Basketball Assn., might have become just a footnote to history--the other guy in the coin flip that sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Milwaukee Bucks and Walk here to the Phoenix Suns--if it were not for a tumor that grew silently inside his spinal cord.

It is because of that rare medical condition that Walk is not living the unassuming life of a retired NBA center. These days, Walk is sought out by reporters because he’s confined to a wheelchair and we all want to know what that’s like for a former athlete, and if he’s angry with an unfair world.

There is little anger, except for Walk’s wonder at the sudden attention. He finds it odd that he’s singled out, interviewed, even pitied. What about the average Joe out there with worse problems?

Neal Walk wonders about them, now. He is one of them. Walk thinks about where he’ll park his car, what he’ll do if it rains and which food stores have wheelchair access ramps. These are his concerns now.

“When it’s raining and you mess up, you don’t bring the right stuff, you get very wet,” he said. “What if you find yourself face down in a parking lot. It could be a long time before someone comes to give you a hand.”

The 6-foot 10-inch Walk was the first-round pick of the expansion Suns in 1969, after an All-American senior season at the University of Florida. He was the second overall pick in the draft that year, behind UCLA’s Lew Alcindor, now Abdul-Jabbar, who went to the Bucks.

Walk played five seasons with the Suns, then was traded to the New Orleans Jazz before the 1974-75 season. Then he was dealt to the New York Knicks, where he played until being released in 1976. He later played professionally in Israel and Italy.

Walk never knew about the lesion growing in his spine, but his doctors tell him it was probably there at birth. All Walk knows is that about a year ago he began having trouble walking.

“I was dizzy. I was getting a loss of coordination,” he said.

The problem led to neck surgery last March. Doctors discovered bone chips and a disk that was pressing against the spinal cord.

“I saw a neurologist,” Walk said. “He gave me a few tests. At first he thought I had multiple sclerosis. After further search, they discovered the disk and chips in the neck. That was better than having multiple sclerosis.”

So much for the good news, though. In August, doctors discovered a growth on his spine.

Dr. William White, a neurosurgeon at Barrow’s Neurological Institute in Phoenix, performed an eight-hour operation that was centered between Walk’s shoulder blades. White removed all of the benign growth and said there is little chance it will reappear.

“It’s probably something he was born with,” White said. “You have it but don’t feel it until you start to find symptoms. If a lesion inside the spinal cord expands slowly, the spinal cord expands and eventually evaporates. To have this in the spinal cord is rare. It is not common.”

Although doctors were able to save Walk’s bowel and bladder function, Walk lost full use of his legs. His spinal cord was not severed during the surgery, but there was extensive nerve damage.

That’s why Walk’s legs don’t work. His brain is sending the proper signals to his legs, but the signal is being blocked at the point of injury. “Like poor transmission on a TV,” is how he puts it.

Walk spent two months in the hospital after surgery, then began intense physical therapy last October as an outpatient at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center. At question in the therapy is if Walk will ever walk again, and if so, how much help he will need.

“He (White) did the nuts and bolts,” Walk said. “The rest is up to me.”

If only it were so simple. There is grueling physical therapy.

“This is like the longest training camp of my life,” he said. “And the toughest.”

It is 10:30 in the morning and the sprawling St. Joseph’s Medical Center complex in central Phoenix is teeming with activity. Here, five mornings a week, Walk reports for therapy. Across the street is Barrow’s Neurological Institute.

Walk barrels through the double glass doors at outpatient rehabilitation in his black wheelchair. The chair is a specially made model, meant to accommodate his large frame. With this chair, his knees don’t knock his chin and his arms don’t drag on the floor. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s an improvement over stock models.

Walk is one of the clinic’s better-known patients. You might say he is notorious. It is not common for rehab patients to bring visitors, but Walk has had CBS-TV follow him around.

Far from aiding him in his recovery, Walk’s background as an athlete has proved to be a major obstacle. The very thing that gave him a career as a professional athlete--his height--has become a powerful deterrent to his recovery.

“When he first came here, it took four of us to get him up in a walker,” Geri Slater, one of Walk’s physical therapists, said. “He’s the first athlete I’ve ever worked with. The first day I met (Walk), he called me an ass. I had asked him how tall he was. This is the first gargantuosa I’ve ever had.”

It still takes at least two therapists to assist Walk in his rehabilitation. After a lengthy session of stretching and manipulation of his legs, Walk is sweating freely.

There is some movement in his legs, but that is a tantalizing thing. Because his legs are long, they act as unwieldy levers when Walk tries to control them.

“His height works against him,” said Deborah Taylor, Walk’s supervising therapist. “His being so tall and having so little strength in his legs . . . if he was a shorter man he would be doing better.”

A second phase of his therapy is using the walker. Walk’s legs, from knee to ankle, are strapped into braces. He must lift his entire body weight, about 220 pounds, and transfer that weight over the bars of the aluminium walker.

It is difficult and frustrating. The therapists fuss and scold Walk. Each step he takes is the product of an orchestrated effort among the two therapists and Walk. He calls this “doing the two-step.”

What does he think about during the exercise in the walker?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Who the hell thinks about walking? I try to think about rotating my hips and moving my legs. But the conscious mind is not equipped to deal with this. I don’t know.”

Today is not a good day. It takes Walk three sessions to negotiate half the length of the hallway.

“I can usually do the whole thing,” he said.

Someone asks how long the hall is. “It’s about 90 feet,” Walk answers. “About the length of a basketball court.”

Walk looks at the hallway and remembers he used to travel the length of a basketball court in 13-15 strides.

“We were pleased that we were able to save his bowel and bladder function,” White said.

“There is some nerve damage. I think he can walk. He’s walking now with braces and a walker. With therapy, he will gradually decrease the amount of support he will need. Eventually, he’ll use a cane or a brace. but he’s not ever going to be jumping around.”

There is some discrepancy between what Walk envisions himself as being able to do and what White and the therapists think.

“I was never a hurrier and I was never a rusher,” Walk said. “What am I going to do now? What’s the rush. The only thing I’m in a hurry to do is walk.”

Walk has tapped into a hitherto unknown source of patience. He can, and does, spend hours at the tedious and gritty work of retraining his legs. Where he loses his patience is with the bureaucracy that is intent on classifying him.

To potential employers and most of society, Walk is disabled.

To some agencies, he’s not disabled enough.

So Walk is battling both his infirmity and a Social Security and insurance maze that denies him benefits.

“Social Security is amazing,” he said. “They have denied me my benefits. I’ve made a lot of money over the years, and they don’t want me to have what I put in. They told me I would have to verify my condition. I said, ‘Do you think I’d come down to this place for $50 a month if I didn’t need it?’

“They want me to work, but what job am I going to do right now? And what about (time for) my therapy? They sent me a letter to recommend I don’t do any mountain climbing. I like jokes and laughter, but really.”

Walk has refused to accept handicapped license plates or a window card because he refuses to accept the Department of Motor Vehicles’ classification of his condition as permanent.

It’s the same story with his insurance company. One hospital stay cost more than $40,000. But most of his current bills are not strictly medical--the cost of rehab, hand controls for his car, the wheelchair.

Walk is living off his savings. He had worked at a credit bureau here, but said that because the restroom was not wheelchair-accessible he was not likely to return. Another factor hindering job search is that Walk is taking anti-spasm medicine, which dulls his ability to concentrate.

His own experience with insensitivity has made Walk a budding activist for the rights of the disabled. Walk admits that when he was making a living on his legs’ ability to function at a high level, he never gave a thought to what would happen if they couldn’t.

“Of course, you don’t think about it until you are in the position I’m in,” he said. “Now, I think about it all the time.” Walk was the Suns’ second-leading scorer in 1972-73. Now he wants to watch the games but is not allowed to sit in his chair on the arena floor.

“Just because you become injured and you are in a contraption like this doesn’t mean you lose your cultural affinity,” he said.

One of the most profound changes, Walk has noticed, is how others, even friends, treat him differently.

“Some do, that’s on them,” he said. “People should sit around with paraplegics and quads. They are just like everyone else.”

Walk is not bitter, but bemused.

“Why me?” he asks. “Why not me? I’ve lived a pretty good life. What makes me so special is that everyone wants to talk about it. I find that ludicrous. I don’t have a reason to be angry. Mine was just growing there. It’s different for me. I have the probability and the hope and the intention of walking again. Some people are complete paras or quads. I don’t have to deal with that.

“They say adversity introduces man to himself. Maybe I’m supposed to find out what I’m made of. Maybe some of that determination can be extracted.”