Bill Walton passed away a few days ago. I think in a column back when, I may have made mention of this. If so, some of this may sound familiar. I never met Bill Walton but I was close to him one day.
Howard Payne, back around 1970, got an invitation to go to South Carolina with their basketball team. I was along for the ride broadcasting the only game we played in. We ended up staying a couple of nights and we played where the University of South Carolina plays their games. It was a post season tournament, kind of hard to explain, but we ended up playing the Air Force or Navy, anyway it was a military basketball team where it looked very much like they took all the really great athletes in that branch of the service and made a basketball team.
We go down and the first day of the tournament we’re not involved but just watching. Now, it was cold. We were sitting there and watching a ballgame and the door opens down at the bottom and here comes another team walking in. All of them looked normal, except one. All of them had tennis shoes, long pants, heavy coats, stuff like that. This one guy kind of trails the group and I’m not exaggerating, this guy is seven foot, seven foot one, and couldn’t help but get your attention. He comes walking in and he’s barefooted and he has on coveralls, no shirt underneath, long bright red hair, bright red beard. I mean he looked like a giant Huckleberry Finn who was wandering in because he had no idea what he was doing.
Well, we laughed at him and made jokes and everything. He comes up in the stands and sits with his team mates. I don’t think we were the only ones laughing at him. All of a sudden, one of the coaches of another team comes up and says, “Do you know who that is?” We all said, “No” and he said, “Well, nobody has ever heard of him because he just got out of high school.” We were all amazed and we said, “High school?”
He said, “Yeah, a California high school and this team just picked him up, but wait until you see him play. His name is Bill Walton and he can flat play.” So, we waited until the next day and sure enough, he dominated! So, the name stuck with me! One other thing, I said, “Where’s he going to college?” and he said, “UCLA”. I said, “Well, he will change” (because UCLA had one of the great disciplinarian coaches anywhere, John Wooden). Then I said, “He’ll either play for somebody else or he’ll change.”
Boy, did he ever change. Athletes couldn’t play as freshmen back then but their freshman actually beat their varsity team on more than one occasion in practice. Their varsity team was winning National Championships. Walton’s team was that good. As a sophomore he became an All American. Now, he had short cut red hair, no facial hair, and was the neatest looking “real good kid” that you could imagine. I remember some people saying, “I just wish all the men everywhere playing basketball could look like him – neat, well-trimmed, yes ma’am’, no ma’am”. I just said, “Wait till he turns pro.” He was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers and I think they won the NBA title in 1977 or so. He had horrible foot problems through college and the NBA. He eventually ended up with the Boston Celtics and won another crown with them. Then he became an analyst on television and, well, he went back to being a character – and he was!
But, make no mistake, he was a great, great, basketball player. I have no idea what he was other than that, but he was a great, great player!
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].