Thirtysomething : Bill Walton, Former Symbol of the ‘60s, Has Joined the Broadcasting Establishment

Three, two, one . . . Bill Walton on TV, Bill Walton on the radio, Bill Walton writing in the Sporting News, Bill Walton up close and trying to become personal with the Establishment.

“Imagine this: Bill Walton--media mogul,” CBS announcer Pat O’Brien said. “Good Lord, the 1990s have arrived.”

A tie has replaced the headband. The beard is gone, the hair is cut, the Deadhead wants to become a talking head.

“This just proves,” said John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach, “you never know.”

The enigmatic athlete, who once evaded media types, has become one in life after basketball. And he already has had to conduct the dull interview.

“Oh, my God,” he said, “that’s the worst.”

In less than a year since he picked up a microphone, he has gone from no-pay duty at XTRA radio in San Diego to CBS-TV exposure during the NCAA tournament and on to nationwide attention for his newspaper criticism of Portland Coach Rick Adelman during the NBA playoffs.

“Bill has the confidence to be a little bizarre,” said Greg Lee, former UCLA teammate and now basketball coach at San Diego’s Clairemont High. “Sure, it’s going to get him in trouble at times, but how can you be a bigger jerk than Dick Vitale? Vitale is ugly, short, bald, a terrible coach, loud and makes millions. So if he can make it, why can’t Bill Walton, who really knows the game?”

Walton has interviewed for the Clipper analyst’s post at KCOP-TV and, although Mike Fratello is expected to sign a contract to retain that job, station officials said they are looking for a way to include Walton.

NBC-TV executive producer Terry O’Neil has promised to review his work, Prime Ticket wants him and Walton continues to talk with television executives in San Diego about earning more time in front of the camera.

“I want to be successful,” he said. “I was successful while playing the game, but I want to be successful today. I want to be in television broadcasting, and I want to be broadcasting championship games. That’s my goal.”

The basketball player, who developed a reputation for being a rebel with a long list of causes, had to begin his new career by finding an Establishment willing to lend him the airwaves. It was no easy task.

“We had two problems,” said Martin Mandel, who represents Walton’s broadcasting interests. “The public’s image of Bill was him wearing a red bandanna, long hair, and ‘gee, wasn’t he somehow tied into Patty Hearst or something?’

“When Bill first got into the NBA and during his time at UCLA, he really didn’t speak to the press, and there was a view of him of being very reclusive. When he did speak, he had these radical things to say. I had one person tell me, ‘I’m not sure I want to take the risk of him closing down my station.’

“But Prime Ticket in Los Angeles gave Bill the first opportunity. They had the UCLA package and Bill’s identification with UCLA was very strong. And quite candidly, we were able to convince them whatever his political views were, they wouldn’t show up on the air.”

Those folks who really know Bill Walton were not concerned with his political tilt. They have known him to be a caring person, a tireless worker and a man of integrity.

“They ought to remember that when he was in school at UCLA, I had no problem with him during the season,” Wooden said. “Out of the season--yes. Off the floor I worried. I worried when he was thrown in jail with the group that took over the administration building. I worried when he stopped traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, and when he interrupted classes giving his views on the Vietnam War.”

The early Walton was a vegetarian, who took unconventional attitudes on race, and long before a nation came to agree, he had a message on his answering machine asking for Richard Nixon’s impeachment.

“But he was always a good person, very thoughtful and very bright,” Wooden said. “He can accept authority, and he’s changed so much since that time. He’s no longer anti-Establishment.”

Letter writers to the sports editor of the Oregonian in Portland, however, were not so understanding when Walton was given the opportunity to render a series of opinions on the playoff series between Portland and Los Angeles.

“A lot of readers still remember Walton when he was a long-haired hippie trying to hitchhike through Portland,” said Jeff Wohler, sports editor

for the Oregonian. “When I got his first column, though, bingo! It was just what I had asked for. It was handwritten, it was his stuff and the best word I can use to describe it is, it was astute. “

Walton, although ever so uncooperative as the interviewee, has proved to be a provocative analyst. One of his columns in the Oregonian prompted Adelman to fire back in print.

“I love it,” said NBC’s Charlie Jones. “Bill will tell you his opinion and he won’t back off. He tells the truth, and that can be rather startling in sports television.

“I think we’re coming into a time where you can be opinionated, and that’s one reason why I think he’ll be a big hit. This is the wave of the ‘90s.”

Walton shrugged off Adelman’s criticism.

“Professional basketball is about winning and losing,” Walton said. “You have guys who are successful and guys who are failures, and that comes up every day. If you want people to say nice things about you every day, being in basketball is not the place to be.

“I think it’s a mistake when people approach this on a friendship level. This is not a friendship. It’s business. We’re not at Mission Beach, sharing a beer and watching the waves roll in.”

Walton was all business in 1977 when he led the Trail Blazers to the NBA title. But he left in disgust in 1979 after challenging the team’s medical treatment of his foot. He went on to play for the Clippers and finished his career with the Boston Celtics.

“It’s ironic what he’s doing today,” said Denver broadcaster Brian Drees, who worked for KOIN-TV in Portland during Walton’s playing days there. “I think he’s pretty good on the air, but I never would have suspected that back then.

“The problem was getting him to talk. There was one stretch when it got to be kind of a joke. I would ask him every day after practice to talk, and he would just shake his head and walk off. It got to be 21 straight days before he finally did something on camera.”

That was a long time ago, and now Bill Walton is 38 and the father of four boys.

“I’m a lot different person now than . . . at age 17,” he said. “I’ve matured a lot. I’m a lot smarter.”

Said Ted Walton, Bill’s father: “I remember having dinner with Bill Center of the San Diego Union, and he asked Bill why he had gotten into so many controversial things in school. Bill said something like people change, and that he had changed.

“I thought his answer was pretty mature. When you think back to what you might have said to your second or third girlfriend, you would never say those things to your wife. People change. I think back to some of the dumb things I said, but of course at age 17 there wasn’t a crowd of reporters around me taking down every word. Thank God.”

People change, and sometimes the results are dramatic.

“I’m amazed how well he’s done,” said Bill’s brother, Bruce Walton, general manager of KIFM radio in San Diego.

“I remember when they retired his jersey in Portland two years ago. They showed a five-minute video on DiamondVision of his days in Portland, and part of it was an interview he did. He was stammering and stuttering and struggling to just get the words out of his mouth.

“When the video finished and the house lights came up, Bill came to the podium and delivered a 15-minute oration that had the crowd standing and stomping their feet. I looked at my dad and said, ‘Where in the hell did he get that?’ As a public speaker, he went from a huge hole to Dale Carnegie just like that.”

Bill Walton stuttered as a youngster, but it caused no concern in the Walton household. As Bruce said, “Put a basketball in his hands and who cares what he says?”

Besides, Ted Walton grew up stuttering, and with few exceptions, he did just fine.

“I used to have a terrible time telling a joke because I’d come to the punch line and I couldn’t get it out,” Ted Walton said. “But I got over it about age 21, yelling at recruits in the Army.”

The younger Walton eventually wanted basketball fans to hear what he had to say, so he went to work on his speech. He sought the advice of Marty Glickman, who for years coached NBC’s announcers, and then he practiced behind closed doors.

“It’s not important to me on what I did,” he said. “It may be to you, but not to me, and it’s not something I really want to talk about. It’s just something that was part of me. I got over it and I’m glad I did.”

Besides conquering a speech problem, he had to learn the business of broadcasting. As a basketball player he knew how to prepare himself for competition. He worked with some of the game’s finest coaches and spent hour after hour working on his skills.

This is a different game, however.

“It’s very difficult work, but I like it being difficult,” he said. “One of the reasons I like it so much is because there is lots of pressure. You have to be right on. You have to do your work, be prepared and then deliver on time. Just like as a player.

“It’s sort of like your jumper--once the ball’s out of your hand, once the words are out of your mouth, you’ve got to move on and go get the rebound or get back on defense.”

But don’t misunderstand.

“If Bill Walton had his way, he’d sneak into a tent of some sleeping 17-year-old and figure out a way to exchange feet,” said David Halberstam, author of the “Breaks of the Game.”

“He’ll be an outstanding broadcaster. He’s boyish about basketball. He has this profound love of the game.”

If Walton has his way, he will dominate the broadcasting business. Although he might be best known for his apparent undisciplined behavior, it is discipline that has always separated him from the pack.

“He’s been raised in an unusual way by two exceptional people,” Halberstam said. “His parents are highly moral, highly religious people, and by that I don’t mean they are people who go to church and just follow ritual. They believe, and I think they have raised him to be a very honest and disciplined man.”

Walton’s body, however, has betrayed him.

When he met with Don Corsini, Prime Ticket’s vice president of programming and production, Corsini asked Walton, “Why should I hire you?”

Walton pointed to his ankles, and replied, “Because these don’t work anymore.”

Injuries have forced Walton to request a press pass for entrance to the basketball arena. His playing days ended in 1987 with the Celtics. He was college player of the year in 1972, 1973 and 1974 and the NBA’s most valuable player in 1978.

“I have absolutely no ability to play basketball anymore,” he said. “I think if I could still play, even on a recreational level, broadcasting might not be as rewarding as it is. But because of my ankle, I’ll never be able to do anything like that again. Talking about basketball is as close as I can come to the game.”

On March 15, 1990, the bones in Walton’s chronically painful ankle were fused. The pain is gone, but he has lost movement of his left foot.

“Imagine yourself standing at attention and your foot is frozen in that position,” he explained. “You cannot bend it.”

Bored with the inactivity that accompanied the time needed for his foot to heal, he began one-on-one coaching with Louisiana State’s Shaquille O’Neal, the Indianapolis Pacers’ Rik Smits and New Mexico’s Luc Longley, who is a resident guest in Walton’s home.

Walton also agreed to help NBC’s Jones on an experimental broadcast project, and after impressing Jones with his spontaneity, was urged to go looking for open microphones.

“I think he would be a great addition to NBC,” Jones said. “He would be ideal in Pat Riley’s role, although they probably have a predilection to coaches.”

Ten months ago, Walton was leaning on crutches and wondering what he was going to do with his life. Now he’s being mentioned as Bob Costas’ new sidekick.

“I was concerned what his transition would be like from star to reality,” said Bruce Walton, who was an offensive lineman for UCLA and the Dallas Cowboys. “But I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. He’s entered in at the grunt level and it’s been, ‘Have microphone, will travel.’

“I think his ace in the hole is that he has a passion for the game of basketball and he is a student of the game. I think he would like to coach someday, and that adds to the intellectual side of his presentation. He has something to say and he wants to say it.”

But he doesn’t always say it the way everybody else says it.

Said Ted Walton: “I remember this guy asking him if he missed playing and Bill said, ‘Yeah, I’d really like to go out there and kick ass.’ I had to ask Bruce, who owns a radio station and knows that kind of stuff, if that was one of the seven forbidden words.”

Walton also had the network wags shaking their heads after suggesting that it might be wise for a player to go to the locker room and . . .

“I liked it when he said that guy should just go puke,” O’Brien said. “He does have some things to learn, but we hope he doesn’t get rid of that. I would hope he always has that sort of edge to him.

“That’s what made him a great basketball player and great personality as a player, and that’s what will make him a great announcer. Otherwise, he’s just another jock with a microphone.”

The unpredictable Walton spends hours on the telephone, preparing himself for his broadcast appearances. He was at his best during the NBA finals, when he joined postgame host Jim Laslavic on San Diego’s NBC affiliate, KNSD-TV.

“My sense is that he’s kind of like the John Madden of basketball,” said lawyer Joel Siegal, a friend of Walton. “My fear is that sometimes networks like to play it safe, and it’s kind of like throwing everything into a food processor and it all becomes bland.

“I can’t see Bill getting bland. He’s kind of like Thai food. How can you have bland Thai food?”

Walton craves knowledge, and has always surrounded himself with interesting, if not strange, people. He is as at home at a Grateful Dead concert as he is at Mission Beach.

When he decided to pursue broadcasting, he went in search of the country’s top announcers. He went to New York and sought the advice of everyone from Howard Cosell to Halberstam.

“The thing that I remember most about him interviewing for the analyst job with the Clippers was how aggressive he was,” KCOP-TV President Bill Franks said. “He really wanted the job, and he made it clear to us this is what he wanted to do with his life.”

After his first Prime Ticket telecast, he took the videotape to Jones and asked for a critique.

“I think he’s going to be really one of the good ones,” Jones said. “I think he’s different than the rest of us. When he was very young he decided he was going to be a great basketball player, and so he went out and became a great basketball player.

“He knows what it takes to get from A to B to C to D, and he’s so smart that he realizes he can take those same elements and put them into any other part of his life. Therefore, he expects the results to be the best, because that’s what he expected of himself before, and that’s what he got.”

Like the little boy who shot basketball after basketball despite no guarantee of success, he has been willing to take most every broadcasting or writing assignment.

“He’s taken the Prime Tickets, our “Up Close” show, he’s taken the local print stuff and he’s really willing to beat down the doors to get better,” announcer Roy Firestone said. “That’s something most of these athletes don’t want to do. They mostly want to become overnight successes. They want to be Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells, but there’s very little room for those kind of people, and this guy has done it in a different way. He’s willing to take his lumps.”

He has appeared regularly, without compensation, with Brad Cesmat on XTRA-radio, and last year worked with Cesmat in broadcasting four University of San Diego basketball games.

“He didn’t ask for one cent,” Cesmat said. “He’s never turned me down. I’ll have him on the talk show and he’ll generate so many calls now that we’re turning people away.”

When CBS called with NCAA tournament assignments, Walton responded like a youngster leading the UCLA fast break.

“He was unbelievably candid and insightful,” said Bob Stenner, the CBS producer assigned to Walton. “There are those people who would probably say he was a little rough around the edges, and that would probably be fair. However, I liked it.

“He was so full of energy and so well-prepared. He was probably higher than the players were. I thought he was quite refreshing. I mean, who better to tell you what it’s like to play in that tournament?”

As basketball begins its off-season, an impatient Walton is left to work as a free agent on his new career. His goal is already in place: A place in next year’s NBA championship picture.

“During the playoffs I told him, ‘You really have to be pleased--you had a great year,’ ” Jones said. “But he said, ‘When the playoffs are going on, I ought to be at NBC.’ That means he wants to be No. 1. I love that kind of thinking because then he probably will be there.”

Said O’Brien: “It’s a tough time to get in the business. But Bill Walton will be fine. He’s a talented guy, and he’s even the guy who got John Wooden to listen to him about Vietnam. I mean, come on, talk about a communicator.”