Bill Walton, Deadhead

His love of basketball and the Grateful Dead never waned

The first time I saw Bill Walton, the legendary basketball player who completed his last trip around the sun this week, was a surprise.

I was at the Milken Global Conference, a sort of Davos of the West Coast, in 2012, killing some time when I noticed Walton’s name on the agenda. I think it was a mid-morning session on the topic of “What Sports Can Teach Us About Life” or some such. I took a seat and waited for the session while I scrolled through emails.

Walton came out with Jim Gray, the famed sports broadcaster and moderator for the event. When Walton walks into a room you take notice. But what also seized my attention was the introductory music — the Grateful Dead’s “Eyes of the World,” with the inspiring lyrics that roll over the bubbling melody:

“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own”

The song played for about 30 seconds or so and then faded out, at which point Walton leaned into Gray and said, very earnestly, but with an impish grin, “Jim, what if we all realized we actually are the eyes of the world?”

As an amateur Deadhead, I experienced a petite frisson being at a conference of 3,000 business leaders while the Dead were rippling through the PA system. As I recall, Walton didn’t obsess about the Dead after that, but focused on his playing days, especially his heroic efforts to overcome debilitating foot and knee injuries during his Hall of Fame career.

Walton was one of the world’s biggest Grateful Dead obsessives. He saw his first show in 1967 when he was 15 years old and never stopped after that. All told, he probably saw more than 1,000 Dead shows in his lifetime (my two dozen shows were not even a rounding error). He was a true evangelist, insisting that everyone who was important in his life see the band at least once.

For instance, he got most of the Boston Celtics roster to attend a show with him at the Boston Garden, which he recounts with his typical enthusiasm here. Watching it, you keep waiting for some punchline — maybe Larry Bird walking out in dismay or something — but instead it ends in pure love and delight.

He did fail at converting one of the most important people in his life — John Wooden, his coach at UCLA, where he chalked up one of the best games of his life in the Bruins’ defeat of Memphis State to win the NCAA Championship in 1973 (the year the Dead debuted their Wall of Sound). But seriously, can anyone besides Walton imagine John Wooden at a Dead show? Here, Walton recalls Wooden’s vicarious exposure to the Dead, which didn’t go well.

“When the Grateful Dead would come to Pauley Pavilion (where UCLA played), it would be a nighttime show,” Walton remembered. “We’d practice in the daytime while they were setting up. Then we would leave and would come back for the concert, after having dinner back at the dorms. The Grateful Dead would use our locker rooms as their dressing rooms. When we would come into practice the next day, Coach Wooden would walk in to do his daily inspection while we were getting dressed in the locker room—to check whether we had shaved or if our hair was too long. He would walk in the locker room, and he would sniff around, “What is that smell?” And we’d say, “Coach, it’s nothing, it’s fine. We’ll see you out on the court. It’ll be OK.”

And so it was.

Two years after that session at the Milken Global Conference, I had the pleasure of actually meeting Walton.

I was at the PAC-12 basketball championship at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. My employer had just begun a marketing partnership with the PAC-12 and I was there to kick the tires.

In between games, I wandered into a cavernous night club on the property that was serving as a hangout during the tournament. It was packed, but when I walked in I picked out Walton right away. It was a particularly bright tie-dyed shirt he had on that day and he stood out even when sitting down.

Without hesitating, I walked up, stuck out my hand and introduced myself. Walton, smiling, rose to the occasion.

It’s a shocking moment when you stand next to Bill Walton. It seemed like it took a few seconds for him to reach his full height of 6-foot-11. By the time he did, my head was at a 45-degree angle and it took a moment to fully comprehend his physical appearance. He was large — very large — and I thought I noticed a few wisps of high-altitude clouds around his head.

He was surrounded by friends and family, including his wife Lori, so I kept it brief, explaining Chevron’s PAC-12 partnership and then, professing my own love of the Dead, thanking him for keeping the Dead’s light burning all these years.

“Oh my God, don’t get him started,” chortled one of his family members. I looked around and several people were rolling their eyes. “Don’t mind them,” Walton said with a smile. “They actually love the Dead too.”

I bowed out then, but a little while later most people, including Walton, started the long walk from the club to the arena for the next game.

I fell in with Walton, chatting about brackets, and then noticed the way he moved. Slowly and painfully. Walton’s feet were massive and appeared even more so because of the orthopedic shoes he wore to compensate for the debilitating structure of his feet, a condition he had endured since he was 12.

His slow gait allowed people to approach him as he walked through the venue. One after another, they would come up to him to say hi and shake his hand. He was patient and attentive, so much so that a 5-minute walk turned into 20 minutes. He smiled the whole time and I imagined “Eyes of the World” playing, with Walton the embodiment of Robert Hunter’s lyrics: “Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings.”

Bill Walton, holding forth at a Dead tailgater in Chicago, 2015

I had a brief chat with Bill in 2015 when we were at a tailgate party for the Grateful Dead’s last shows at Soldier Field in Chicago. He was in his element and not a word about basketball was had.

RIP Bill, one of the greatest who played the game, the red-headed hippie and Deadhead of all Deadheads. Your ripples are expanding forever.