He Can Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk

It may be hard for those not familiar with Bill Walton’s background to envision when he couldn’t talk.

“It wasn’t a slight speech problem,” he said from his hotel room in Minneapolis on Thursday. “I couldn’t talk at all. I couldn’t say hello, I couldn’t say thank you.”

Walton, 48, learned to talk at 28.

Dr. Ernie Vandeweghe put Walton together with the late Marty Glickman, and they spent a weekend together in San Diego in 1980. Glickman, then a “sportscasting coach” for NBC, worked with Walton and taught him how to talk without stuttering.

“It’s one of those lessons of life,” Walton said. “You work on your weaknesses. In basketball, if you can’t dribble with the left hand, that’s what you work on.

“I had failed to work on my problem. I had no idea I could learn how to speak.”

He has been like a kid with a new toy. “I haven’t shut up since,” he said.

His critics would concur. And Walton seems to have plenty of critics these days.

“I do the best job I can,” he said. “I can only be myself, that’s all I can be.”

Commentators are often hired because of their marquee value and then collect a nice paycheck without ever offering a strong opinion. Walton offers plenty of strong opinions, and he gets criticized for it.

He took some extra heat when he and Dick Enberg worked Arizona’s last two NCAA tournament games. One of Walton’s four sons, Luke, plays for Arizona.

It wasn’t the first time Walton had worked a game involving one of his sons. He called a Louisiana State game when oldest son Adam played for the Tigers, and Walton worked an Arizona game earlier this season.

On Sunday, when Arizona defeated Illinois to advance to the Final Four, he didn’t openly cheer for his son’s team, although at times he may have let a little anguish show.

“I love the big moments, the championship moments, and that was a great game between two great teams,” Walton said. “Luke is a basketball player and I’m a broadcaster and before we went to San Antonio I told Luke we were both going there to work. We weren’t going on a family vacation.

“I told Luke, no matter what, I’m going to the Final Four. Now he is too.”

IN DEMAND

Walton is everywhere these days, working NBA games for NBC and Clipper games for Channel 9 and Fox Sports Net 2. This weekend, he’ll be part of the CBS Final Four cast working the studio show.

To use Walton, CBS Sports President Sean McManus had to get permission from NBC.

Of criticism directed at Walton last weekend, McManus said, “We got a handful of [complaint] calls. We got way more compliments.

“We have no regrets assigning him to work his son’s games. I think the extra emotion factor added to the enjoyment for viewers.”

Walton picks Michigan State to win it all. He likes Duke over Maryland. And Arizona?

“It’s basically impossible for young players to duplicate the emotional commitment that was required for the victory over Illinois,” he said, diplomatically.

ACCIDENTAL APPEARANCE

Phil Jackson was on Jay Leno’s show Tuesday night, as scheduled.

Jeanie Buss was also on the show, only her appearance wasn’t scheduled.

Leno did a bit about college students on spring break and secrets they keep from their parents. Members of the studio audience, shown in freeze frame, were part of the bit.

For instance, a caption under a young man said his parents didn’t know he had flunked out. And a caption under a female member of the audience read, “The only thing ever passed from Kobe to Shaq.”

A caption under someone identified as Jennifer Nile read: “In the last week, the most downloaded photo on the whole Internet.” The person shown was a blushing Buss, who had accompanied Jackson to the show.

Obviously, the cameraman had no idea who she was. Nor did Leno. Buss, always a good sport, after the show said, “If I had known I was going to be on camera, I would have worn makeup.”

Jackson, who is promoting his new book, “More Than a Game,” is making the rounds. He was also on “60 Minutes II” Tuesday night. Buss, also interviewed, said of her relationship with Jackson: “We’re not Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. . . . We’re two adults. . . . I really don’t understand the fascination.”

Jackson will be a guest of Craig Kilborn on CBS’ “The Late, Late Show” Tuesday at 12:35 a.m.

SHORT WAVES

Fox Sports Net is shuffling its news shows. Beginning Monday, the newly named “Southern California Sports Report,” formerly the “Regional Sports Report,” moves to an earlier time slot, usually around 10 p.m. It will be followed by the “National Report.” Todd Merkow, general manager of Fox Sports Net in Los Angeles, said the shift should enhance both shows. . . . Irv Kaze celebrates the ninth anniversary of his weekly radio talk show this weekend. John Wooden, a guest on Kaze’s first show on Final Four weekend in 1992, will again be a guest Saturday at 6 p.m. on KRLA (870). . . . Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus will be playing in the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf on ESPN and ABC over the next three days, and they will be back on ESPN Tuesday at 5 p.m. in a “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” segment taped Monday at St. Augustine, Fla. . . . NBC will wrap an NBA doubleheader around BellSouth golf on Sunday. During the first game, Indiana at Philadelphia, reporter Summer Sanders will spend time with Ann Iverson, Allen’s mom, for a feature that will be shown at halftime of the Lakers’ game against the New York Knicks. . . . An interview Darrell Waltrip did with Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be shown on Fox’s NASCAR pre-race show Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

IN CLOSING

Cable operators apparently will never learn you can’t computer program blackouts. Adelphia subscribers watching the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers Wednesday night on TNT missed the end of the game because the Laker-Sacramento game had to be blacked out at 7:30. So that’s when the computer made the screen go dark. No wonder more and more people are unhooking their cable and getting satellite dishes.

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What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for March 24-25:

SATURDAY

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Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Figure skating: World Championships, women 7 8.5 15 NCAA tournament: USC vs. Duke 2 6.2 16 NCAA tournament: Stanford vs. Maryland 2 5.7 16 Golf: PGA Players Championship 4 3.8 11 Pro football: XFL, Las Vegas at Xtreme 4 2.8 6 Hockey: Mighty Ducks at Kings 7 0.6 2

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*

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Cable Network Rating Share Boxing: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Arturo Gatti HBO 3.2 6 Auto racing: NASCAR Winston Cup Happy Hour FX 0.6 2 Drag racing: NHRA O’Reilly Nationals qualifying ESPN2 0.6 1 Auto racing: NASCAR Busch Grand National 250 FX 0.3 1 Women’s NCAA tournament: Xavier vs. Tennessee ESPN 0.3 1

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SUNDAY

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Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Pro basketball: Lakers at Sacramento 4 6.6 12 Golf: PGA Players Championship 4 5.7 14 Figure skating: World Championships, men, pairs 7 4.9 12 NCAA tournament: Arizona vs. Illinois 2 4.8 11 NCAA tournament: Temple vs. Michigan State 2 3.2 8 Baseball: St. Louis vs. Dodgers 5 2.6 6 Auto racing: NASCAR Ford City 500 11 3.0 7 Golf: LPGA Nabisco Championship 7 1.1 3 Pro football: XFL, Birmingham at Chicago 13 1.0 3

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Cable Network Rating Share Drag racing: NHRA O’Reilly Nationals ESPN2 1.3 3 Pro football: XFL, New York/New Jersey at Orlando TNN 0.8 2 Drag racing: NHRA O’Reilly Nationals ESPN 0.6 2 Tennis: Ericsson Open ESPN2 0.4 1

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WEEKDAY RATINGS: Thursday, March 22: Duke vs. UCLA, Ch. 2, 7.0/11; Kentucky vs. USC, Ch. 2, 4.9/10. FRIDAY, March 23: Illinois vs. Kansas, Ch. 2, 4.9/8; Arizona vs. Mississippi, Ch. 2, 2.9/7. MONDAY: PGA Players Championship, Ch. 4, 3.2/12

Note: Each rating point represents 53,542 L.A. households. Cable ratings reflect the entire market, even though cable is in only 63% of L.A. households.