Not Just Another Great White Hope

is dunking the ball into kareem abdul jabbar's face really the way to nirvana? for bill walton, it's close

Portland, Oregon, is known for rain, clean air, environmental concern, evergreen trees and bar-brawlin', shitkickin' lumberjacks. Last June fifth, the city became known for something else: a professional team led by a bearded, vegetarian, 6'11" center who supports Chavez, reads Vonnegut, rides a ten-speed bike, mischievously doused the mayor with beer and who, at the bottom line, plays basketball more joyfully and more completely than any other big man who ever lived.

On that day, the last day of their seventh year, the Portland Trail Blazers, who had been laughable but never lovable through six long, losing seasons, won the National Basketball Association championship. And as a sea of fans stormed the court, Bill Walton, the club's heart, soul, captain and card-carrying member of America's counterculture, stood above them all, ripped off his white-and-red jersey, rolled it into a wet ball and flung it far into the stands. He then made his way to the locker room, where he threw his arm around some teammates, whispered to others, kissed still another on the cheek and swatted a champagne bottle out of someone's hand, shattering it against a wall.

"God, this stuff tastes bad," he said, swigging from another bottle. Nearly two hours later, after he'd shaken every hand and savored every last sweet drop of victory, Walton was still stretched on a table, naked, sipping one of his favorite Sunburst fruit juices. "Man," he said, "I feel good all over."

•

The next day, some 100,000 Portlanders turned out for a parade celebrating the long-awaited success of the only major-league team in town. While his teammates cruised in open-top limos, Walton tooled alongside on his ten-speed. This $400,000-a-year superstar was wearing cutoffs, a sweat shirt and sandals, and he had a big lipstick print on his cheek. Not far along the mobbed route, he dismounted and left the bike with a stranger. "That may have been the stupidest thing I've ever done," he said later. "I hope whoever has it will please bring it back. It's the only bike I've got." But his spirits were still soaring. He balanced a beer can on Portland mayor Neil Gold-schmidt's head, then poured some on him. "This is as much fun as I've had since I was eight years old," 'Walton said. That same day, he declined an invitation to travel to New York to accept the new Thunderbird he had won as most valuable player in that final series against the Philadelphia 76ers. Walton, who once spoke out against capitalism, consumerism, racism and almost any other ism you could name, didn't need the car, anyway. He had just bought a new Mercedes. And the stranger returned his ten-speed.

•

About six weeks earlier, before a play-off game against Chicago, Walton, as is his custom, was in a dressing-room corner, closing his eyes, clapping, toe-dancing like a boxer, puffing his cheeks with short bursts of breath and then sucking in until he nearly began hyperventilating. That's his way of revving up. Before games of special importance or before confrontations with special players, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Julius "Dr. J" Erving, he'll go through this ritual. So there's no doubt that Walton gets into his work. But no one really knew how into it until one night in the fall of 1976. It was the beginning of a new season with new teammates and a new coach. As the Trail Blazers' newly appointed captain, Walton requested to say a few words after coach Jack Ramsay--an intense, studious man with a Ph.D. in education--had made a sober pregame speech. "OK, now," Walton said, "let's give these guys some fuckin' shit!" The reserved Ramsay was flabbergasted, but the line became a standing joke, something the players waited for before leaving for the court. When Captain Bill forgot to say it, they reminded him. This time, in Chicago, as he faced his first play-off game as a pro, Walton was really juiced. The same guy who sat there after the game, stoic, polite, uncommunicative and unprofane as hell, hit the door on his way out, turned and shouted, "OK, now, let's give these guys some fuckin' shit, like we're eatin' pussy!"

Some weeks later, the Blazers were trailing in the fourth quarter of a play-off game against Los Angeles. Curry Kirkpatrick was there for Sports Illustrated and gave a lively account of the action: "In the next 5:18, [Walton's] eyes glazed and raging as if somebody had spiked his kumquat juice with kerosene, the Mountain Man scored seven baskets. He banked, he tipped. He scored, he stuffed. He hooked right, he hooked left. After this reign of terror had subsided, Portland had the lead, 93-84." Nothing noteworthy, except the points came against the 7'2" Abdul-Jabbar, considered by many the game's greatest player and Walton's natural rival since both went to UCLA, where, five years apart, they won All-America honors, history degrees, a high percentage of games, N.C.A.A. titles and few friends in the media. On one play that symbolized the 1976-1977 pro-basketball season, Walton paused, flew down the middle and "flung himself into the air. Abdul-Jabbar went up to meet him somewhere north of reality." Walton violently dunked the ball right into those famous protective goggles, then waved to his best friend on the Blazers, Maurice Lucas, as if to say, "That was in Kareem's face." N.B.A. players say things like that all the time. And no one would blame Walton for saying it. Kareem had had his moments against him and had once even humiliated him. That was in Dayton, before Walton's rookie year, in an exhibition game no one would have paid attention to had it not been the first ballyhooed meeting of the UCLA giants. Or giant, as it turned out. Abdul-Jabbar outscored him 28 to 8. I was in the locker room when it was over and Walton's face was as red as his hair. Now, almost three years later, he had gotten his nationally televised revenge, highlighted by that savage dunk. But he didn't have to say anything. The shot spoke for itself; it was a macho manifesto. Yet the peculiar trademark toothy grin Walton flashed after that play-off game Portland went on to win--peculiar because he fights to keep a straight face, then curls his upper lip over his teeth before giving in to the urge--probably said as much about him as any stand he has taken on Vietnam, nuclear-power plants, Richard Nixon, American Indians and meat eating. It said that Bill Walton had just jammed on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had given him some fuckin' shit. He had gone to heaven.

(Walton was close to heaven the night before Portland's second play-off game in Los Angeles last May. Make that the morning before. It was about three A.M. when he and Ramsay, a fitness freak, went for a dip in a hotel swimming pool. In the rain. Wasn't that, uh, unconventional? "No, it was nice," Walton said, toweling off. "Real nice." That evening, after his team had won again on its way to a 4-0 wipe-out of the Lakers, Walton was back in the pool.)

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On a dry, pretty spring day in Portland, Walton pulled up to the large, old home he, his lady, Susan, and 18-month-old son, Adam, shared (until recently) with sports activist Jack Scott, Scott's wife, Micki, Bill's younger brother, Andy, and an ever-changing number of house guests. When he got out of the car, Walton was greeted by Adam. His father swooped him up, kissed him and lifted him onto his shoulders for a ride to the house. Asked later if he ever changed his son's diapers, Walton laughed and gave this uncertain endorsement of shared duties: "Oh, maybe a few times, but I have other jobs. I'm not saying I believe in a division of labor, but. ..."

He does believe in the joys of father-hood and in Susan Guth, a sandy-haired beach girl he met and first roomed with in their years at UCLA. She gave up beach volleyball and the blessed Southern California sun to be with her man in Oregon, where she mothered his child, kept house, jogged with Bill, palled around with Andy and even tried to dress the part by letting her long hair go a bit wavy and by wearing lumberjackess jeans and work shirts. Their lifestyle was another kind of manifesto: that in the establishment world of pro ball, the Walton family could still be "now" generation--laid back, mellowed out, living together and all that. So much so, in fact, that they took separate vacations after the championship was won, apparently without a trace of jealousy. Bill went river-rafting and Susan went with friends to Hawaii.

All this is not to suggest that Walton, at the age of 25, has sold out for a life of locker-room frivolity. When he talks on subjects other than basketball, he's quick to point out that his values and politics haven't changed. He says he's the same person who, as a UCLA sophomore, was arrested at a demonstration protesting the mining of Haiphong harbor. The same person who sent a telegram to Nixon shortly after Watergate, asking him to resign. The same person who called on the world "to stand with us in our rejection of the U. S. Government." The same person who said he understood blacks' frustrations and aspirations and wouldn't blame a black man for killing him. The same person (continued on page 300)Not Another Great white Hope(continued from page 166) who called the FBI "the enemy" while his friends, the Scotts, were under investigation for allegedly hiding Patty Hearst in a Pennsylvania farmhouse Jack Scott had rented. He was master of ceremonies last February at a Jackson Browne rock benefit for groups working to warn about the nuclear-power industry. He sat in the front row at the Portland trial of two American Indians. "I'm sure the judge who acquitted them was a man of integrity," Scott says, "but it didn't hurt that he was a Blazer season-ticket holder." Walton also supported Cesar Chavez College's teachers and students then trying to keep the Federal Government from closing their college at Mt. Angel. Walton remains, then, the most politicized basket-ball player this side of Bill Bradley, the Rhodes-scholar forward who retired from the New York Knicks after last season to eventually run for public office in New Jersey.

On the other hand, there was a dramatic change in Walton that began to take shape in the fall of 1976, when he reported to training camp for what turned out to be his first healthy, happy season in three years in the Northwest.

Slowly but surely, as the young team built specifically to complement his skills won and won some more, Walton apparently realized that giving N.B.A. centers some fuckin' shit, establishing himself as a bona fide franchise maker and maybe fulfilling his fondest dream by winning a championship--not to mention playing with Adam and biking across the Broadway Bridge on a beautiful day--were greater highs than working for the cause. Especially when that work left him with an image as a cokehead Commie sympathizer with cooties in his hair, incense in the air and Symbionese Liberation Army troops in his garage.

Besides, he is so much more adept at choreographing basketball games than he is at making sociopolitical statements. In an age of specialists, no one is quite like him. Walton, you see, scores when the feeling moves him (i.e., when the team needs it most). He rebounds as if each one may be his last. He passes more accurately and intelligently, regardless of the distance, than anyone has a right to. And he defends not only his man but the basket, as well, as if each shot attempted from close range is a personal affront.

Centers, even great centers, usually excel in one or two of these skills. Abdul-Jabbar is an offensive genius who'd score all day if he and Walton went one on one on a playground. But he isn't as physical around the basket, a must in rebounding and defense; he gets rebounds and blocks shots largely because he's 7'2". Walton gets them even though he is only 6'11"--he bumps people (one of the N.B.A.'s legal illegalities), moves them out of the middle, establishes position, spreads and stretches out and jumps straight up. Dave Cowens of the Boston Celtics is a hell-bent-for-action rebounder and defender who, like Walton, is a winner. But at 6'8-1/2", he's two and a half inches shorter, a critical difference. Nor can he shoot with Walton's touch. Boston's previous star center, Bill Russell, was regarded as a defender and rebounder nonpareil. The Celtics won 12 titles with him. But his shooting was suspect, his passing only average. Even Wilt Chamberlain was a specialist. Early in his career, he'd score 50 points routinely while mostly ignoring the rest of the game; later, he emphasized the other phases, but his scoring suffered. Chamberlain and Russell were special. Many men their size have come and gone without doing much more than pick up a pay check every couple of weeks. That is not to say that Walton is best of all. The point is that he seems the most complete of all. And he can do two things the others could not and can not do, at least not as well. He is a sensational outlet passer, probably the best. While in mid-air with a rebound, he can turn and snap a two-hand pass 45 feet to a guard, initiating the fastest kind of fast break. That knack is the reason Portland is now the best team around. And Walton can also pick out teammates who've gained the slightest step on their man and pass the ball to them through the maze of tangled arms and legs. Abdul-Jabbar may wear goggles, but Walton seems to have eyes in the back of his head.

Because Portland won with him as a nonscoring kind of scorer--one who'd get his 20 but seem more influential in his teammates' getting the other 100--Walton's offensive gifts are often overlooked. Facing the basket, he can bank the ball in, from five to 17 feet, like an automaton. He has developed a hook shot with both hands. He's quick and agile enough to make power spins on his way to driving lay-ups. And he has one move in which he dribbles left or right, then stops on a dime and wheels the other way for a jumper. That one lost Abdul-Jabbar completely a couple of times last spring.

Then there are the intangibles and the immeasurables: heart and pride. Walton seems to have at least his share. He doesn't toe-dance before games because he idolizes Ali or Astaire.

"The games are like an addiction to Bill," Scott says. "The more intense they get, the more he comes alive. You could fly to Peru and get the best cocaine and not get as high as he does on basketball."

•

For two years in Portland, Walton couldn't have gotten much lower. He had left UCLA and Southern California's beaches and backpack trails as a shy, sheltered, enigmatic, private, misunderstood but not unrepresentative Seventies radical to sign a $2,000,000, five-year contract with a Portland team that saw him as more than a multitalented center chosen first in the 1974 college draft. He was a Great White Hope. Walton, of course, resented that, even though it was the least of his problems.

He felt out of place on a losing club wracked by conflicting personalities and ruined by a selfish, playground style that was a basketball bummer to a player who sees the sport as a four-letter word: T-E-A-M. "Bill was blown out by the atmosphere here," says Blazer Larry Steele. Then the injuries came, first sporadically, then in waves. By the end of his second season, Walton had sustained some 20 major injuries. That led to charges of malingering. Some reporters, as well as the man who had negotiated his contract, UCLA alumnus and construction magnate Sam Gilbert, speculated that Walton was so fed up with the losing and lack of camaraderie, he faked some of the injuries. Walton and Gilbert parted the best of enemies and Walton's relations with the media, never much to begin with, worsened. Walton also fueled the fire himself when he took up with Scott, controversially denounced the FBI and showed up everywhere in such woeful wood-chopper getups that an elderly neighborhood woman left a bag of clothes on his doorstep. He also wore his scraggly red hair down to his shoulders and a beard as long as Father Time's. He turned vegetarian and lost 25 pounds (to 205, to the consternation of coaches and club officials alike). And he put his foot in his mouth with outrageous remarks, such as the one in Crawdaddy about the elite pushing meat eating to perpetuate disease and thus the medical industry. What did he think the elite was eating at Le Bistro, Granola? As the aches piled up and the criticism came down along with Portland's constant rains, this sun-and-basketball freak was in a funk.

So Walton was not only ready for a change, he craved it. The Blazers brought in a new coach (Ramsay), who immediately declared himself "a Walton man." They also signed a new power forward (Lucas) to play alongside Walton and he, too, was a vegie. In no time at all, Walton knew his third season could be charmed. He stayed healthy and found he was no longer odd man out but the Man himself. And his teammates made things even nicer by resembling the old Boston Celtics on young legs and by sticking to a selfless, cooperative, all-for-one style that Scott claimed "represented Bill's values because he showed on the court what can be done if people are willing to work together."

From his childhood days in the schoolyards of La Mesa, the San Diego suburb where he grew up, Walton always let his game do the talking. He preferred to chalk up his new happiness (and, perish the thought, his individual accomplishments) to health. While leading the league in rebounding and blocking shots and averaging 20 points a game, he missed only17 games, compared with 78 the first two years.

"I'm just healthy," he said, when Sports Illustrated asked him to explain the difference. "For two years, I wasn't able to run up and down the court freely without making a conscious effort out of it. Without thinking about it. That's no way to play basketball. I love this game. I always have. And I always knew how good I was. It's just that when you're going up against guys you know you can take any time, but you can't because of a bad ankle or too much weight or a broken hand or something else, it's too discouraging. And not any fun."

All through the season that marked his arrival as a force in a class with the 30year-old Abdul-Jabbar and with Chamberlain and Russell of yesteryear, Walton continually downplayed the personality changes others couldn't help but notice. Maybe winning does cure everything. But for those who thought nothing could cure Walton, there were all kinds of mind blowers. He cut his hair short, trimmed his beard, dressed more presentably around his place of business. He opened lines of communication with reporters he trusted. He signed autographs and posed for pictures. He decided to eat in non-vegetarian restaurants, so he could socialize with other Blazers. Once a loner, he led cheers and dispensed free advice. He also dispensed his favorite multicombination fruit juices from a Styrofoam container marked, Bill Walton ... [This will] make you jump inches higher. Whereas he grumpily made it known at the start of camp that he thought David Twardzik, a small, white guard from the defunct American Basketball Association, was a garbage player and Kiwanis Club type, to boot, he quickly became the feisty, belly-flopping Twardzik's biggest booster; the two even went on four-wheel-drive jeep trips in the woods.

Having worked to overcome a stutter in his speech, Walton also liked to talk, at least on a pregame radio show he named As I See It. During one segment, he said, "As I see it, Kareem is playing the best of his life, which is understandable. As you get older, you get smarter. And physically he's in the prime of his life. I realize I have to play well for us to do well against them. ... I'm looking forward to it. There ought to be a lot of great basketball out there." If those were the same great banalities for which he once (and sometimes still) chided writers, no matter. That was how he saw it.

As long as he and his offbeat lifestyle were in the limelight, things were never completely serene for Walton. He said he'd prefer that I mention Susan and Adam as little as possible in this article. When I told him they'd have to be mentioned some, inasmuch as they're an important part of him, he frowned, then grinned, then asked if I'd walk him to the team bus. In a tunnel in the bowels of the arena, he turned to make sure no one was eavesdropping. I expected something earth-shattering. Instead, he said, "We're making a conscious effort to ensure that our son has a normal, happy childhood. We want him out of newspapers and magazines. We realize and accept that I have a certain position and that responsibilities go along with it. But they don't have to involve Adam and Susan."

Then there were the games Walton played with the press, especially in group interviews. Though bright, perceptive and a student of the game, he'd respond to reasonable questions with answers such as "I enjoy playing basketball" or, "Each game is a new experience" or, "I don't think about anything; I just play." Then he'd smile and reporters, their notebooks and expressions blank, would wander elsewhere for wisdom. Walton wasn't smiling the night he told Kirkpatrick he'd "kick his ass" for naming him Mountain Man. Then, just like that, he grinned from ear to ear. Just Walton's idea of a little joke.

"If Walton were black, he couldn't get away with that stuff with the press," Lucas says. "They'd run him out of the league. He'd be a malcontent, a had guy. When you're black, you have to talk to the Man. Bill doesn't have to."

More than a few times, Walton came under fire for his relationship with Scott, the former University of California educator and Oberlin College athletic director who previously had befriended a couple of wayward, way-out souls from pro football, Chip Oliver and Dave Megessey. The 35-year-old Scott not only counseled his famous housemate, he did much of his talking. There was speculation that Walton dodged most interviews because Scott was working on a book about Walton and the 1976-1977 championship season. Scott denied that the book had anything to do with Walton's silence. Walton said he was a private person and, besides, he didn't think there was anything left to say. "What can you possibly write about me that hasn't been written a hundred times before?" he asked Tony Kornheiser of The New York Times. Kornheiser then spent five hours interviewing Scott, talked to other Walton associates and wrote the story.

But compared with Walton's past, these were mere annoyances. Probably all he and anyone else will remember is the afternoon he stood at center court, swarmed by those loving legions, and threw away that sopping jersey in a final, symbolic goodbye to two years of frustration. Then, in the dressing room, they were all around him: Susan; Jack; Andy, whose blond hair reached halfway to the floor; older brother Bruce, who used to play football for the Dallas Cowboys; Ramsay, the coach who cared about his performance, not his idiosyncrasies and lifestyle; and the rest of the Blazers, who had run like hell with his bullet outlet passes and worked so well with his precision interior passes and reaped the benefits of his savage defense, quick shots and skillful command of all phases of the game.

Bill Walton had it all: a gorgeous lady, a handsome son, his circle of revolutionary friends, good health, the cocoon of superficial closeness of a ball team, a bulging bankbook, a new Mercedes, a supply of Sunburst and an unlimited future in the game he loves so well. Bill Walton in Wonderland, king of the mountain at last.

This man who would be king of basketball was on the phone (collect) from the Warns Springs Indian Reservation, where he was spending a week working with reservation youth during one of Oregon's warmest summers. Recently, he, Susan and Adam had moved out of the rambling (and somewhat wrecked) old home on N.W. 24th Avenue near the city center into one big room in a farmhouse about an hour's drive from Portland. Walton wouldn't say where the farm was; that secret was for close friends. But I'd soon be there, because, after several phone calls, he had agreed to let me tag along for a different, hang-loose look at his life--away from antiseptic arenas, overcrowded locker rooms and TV lights, in the clean air and cold creeks of a state he was now calling his kind of laid-back place.

"We'll trip around and do whatever feels good," Walton said. "I'll pick you up at the airport."

There was something else. "Now I want to ask you a favor," he said. "Can you get $1000 from Playboy? Not for me, though I could easily ask for it. For the reservation. I could give them the money out of my pocket, but I want to show that a mainstream American magazine cares."

Having gotten word that the donation probably would be no problem at all, I flew from L.A. to Portland early in August for a first in sports journalism: Bill Walton going out of his way to pick up a reporter.

Well, it will still be a first, because Scott, not Walton, was at the airport. He was wearing cutoffs, heavy boots and a very sheepish look. "Bill probably would want me to cover for him by saying his grandmother died or something," Scott said. "But the truth is, he got a call last night from a friend who asked him to go hiking in central Oregon, and he went. You know, it's nothing against you or the magazine. He's had well over 100 interview requests this summer and yours is the only one he even reacted to."

What was it, then, plain old American lack of concern for fellow man? Or don't mediamen fall into that category?

"Bill has changed some lately," Scott said. "You know, hanging out with a different kind of people. I'll give you an example: He used to know this couple named Abraham and Rachel; they even looked Biblical. One night we were all lounging around and Bill, as he's prone to do, shouted to Susan, 'Make me a sandwich.' And Rachel looked him in the eye and said, 'Fuck you, Bill. Are you helpless? Make it yourself.' He got that silly, little-boy look, shrugged his shoulders, grinned and made the sandwich. Now, well, he's with more 'Yes, Bill' friends, some straighter types who are willing to put up with his whims and excuse him if he's five hours late."

Like many well-known jocks, Walton has been coddled and catered to for a long time. His deafening one-sentence postgame responses--and now, this game of hide-and-seek--perhaps stem not only from his need for privacy but also from his view that his position is privileged.

Bill Walton, then, is also a paradox. Caring enough to swim and play ball with young Indians, yet selfish enough to go hiking rather than collect $1000 for those same kids. Unpretentious enough to live in a farmhouse, yet materialistic enough to drive a Mercedes and invest his $400,000 per. It gets back to the question asked for years by those who've followed his career: Is he a refreshing symbol of a concerned counterculture or merely a self-indulgent ballplayer who haphazardly helped carve an image that doesn't fit? Is he intelligent and enigmatic or just a jock in search of Woodstock? In the Philadelphia Bulletin, writer Mark Heisler wanted to know "how a man who carried a B average in history at UCLA could come off as such a Dumbo?"

"I don't readily answer questions from strangers," Walton says. Asked to explain why he now keeps a low profile and keeps quiet on the issues, he says, "I've learned that there's a time when it's in the team's best interest not to say anything. And, in some instances, not saying anything is really saying a lot. A lot of people understand what not saying anything means, so, in effect, not saying anything is really saying a lot."

Having made that perfectly clear, Walton was free to trip around and feel good. To skinny-dip in those creeks. To lift weights and run and shoot baskets and count the days until the beginning of the next far-out, first-place season. To fantasize about racing his ten-speed, professionally, a clause in his contract to which the Blazers reluctantly agreed. Free to show up at Lucas' wedding, as he did in July, in Bermudas, T-shirt and sandals, and to party with his Blazer buddies who were clotheshorsing it to the hilt.

"It was an awfully hot day," Scott says. "For sure Bill didn't look like much, but he was very sensibly dressed."

He passes more accurately and intelligently, regardless of the distance, than anyone has a right to."