Bill Walton was My Rival, My Brother, and My Close Friend

He had wanted to be more like me on the court‌ and I wanted to be more like him off the court.

Inside Bill’s private teepee, San Diego, CA.

I am at the age, 77, when the death of friends and loved ones is as inevitable and irrevocable as rain. I’ve come to accept that grief will be a major traveling companion in my life until my death. But the unexpected death of my close friend, fellow Bruin, and former NBA rival has staggered me. It has left me wobbly as if I’m trying to keep my balance on a small boat in the middle of a violent storm.

I didn’t know how sick Bill was. A few weeks ago, I wanted to visit him but his wonderful wife Lori said he wasn’t feeling well and we postponed. It was so like Bill to keep his illness to himself in order not to worry his friends. He was committed to having every interaction be a positive, uplifting one. A couple of months ago, I was visiting Bill and Lori and mentioned how much I liked the colorful hand-painted dishes we were eating from. Bill immediately dragged me into his kitchen and started pulling down the same dishes until he’d given me a full set. That was the last time I saw him, but it was so quintessentially Bill that I will never forget the pure joy on his face as he handed me those dishes.

Bill was like a younger brother to me. At first, like many brothers, our relationship was purely competitive. He was determined to prove that he was as good a basketball player as I was, maybe even better. To his credit, there was not a harder-working athlete. Like Kobe Bryant, he was willing to do whatever it took to reach the next level of play. He was always pushing the limits of his abilities. I was equally determined to prove that I was and always would be better. No younger upstart crow was going to knock me from my perch. We were both centers which we took to mean center of attention. Well, we were in our twenties and that kind of stuff mattered then.

He started playing at UCLA for Coach Wooden two years after I graduated. I had won three NCAA championships, he won two. In 1969, I was a first-round, first-overall pick going to the Milwaukee Bucks. In 1974, Bill was a first-round, first-overall pick going to the Portland Trailblazers. Once he joined the NBA, we regularly battled it out, two big men muscling each other in the paint for fourteen years. I was three inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, but Bill never gave an inch. I admired him for that. Our rivalry was so well known that it was even acknowledged in my performance in Airplane! when I snapped at a kid whose dad accused me of not trying except in the playoffs: “Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up the court for 48 minutes.”

We faced off in the 1977 Western Conference finals and Bill’s Trail Blazers swept my Lakers 4-0. Baby brother had humbled me. It took ten years for my revenge in the 1987 NBA Finals. Bill was now playing with the Lakers’ fiercest rivals, the Boston Celtics. It was the tenth time the Lakers and Celtics faced off in the NBA Finals. I was 40 years old and Bill was 34. We were both aging warriors closing in on retirement. But our old rivalry energized us and we battled with the same ferocity as we did in our twenties. At least in our minds. In the end, the Lakers won, 4-2.

After that, our rivalry was replaced with friendship. We began hanging out together and found out how much we had in common beyond basketball. My dad was a cop but was also a jazz musician. Bill’s dad was a social worker and music teacher who taught Bill to play baritone horn. Bill and I were both painfully shy as children. We both found basketball to be a haven for our social awkwardness. The difference is that through the years Bill was able to overcome his reserve and become outgoing and gregarious in social settings while I remained reticent. Whenever we were together at a gathering, he bloomed. His enthusiastic personality and sincere concern for others inspired everyone around him. I marveled that he was never afraid to express his unapologetic love of people. He had wanted to be more like me on the court, I wanted to be more like him off the court.

Bill and I especially bonded over our love for Coach Wooden. Though Coach Wooden disapproved of both Bill and my antiwar politics, he approved of us being passionate about doing something we thought would make the world better. That was his most important lesson to us. Outside of our parents, Coach Wooden had been the most influential person in both our lives. We both maintained a close friendship with Coach Wooden until his death. Bill and I were walking through the Indianapolis RCA Dome tunnel at the NCAA Finals in 2006 to cheer on UCLA when he heard that our beloved Coach Wooden had been hospitalized and wasn’t expected to live. We were both devastated. I leaned against the wall for support. I certainly didn’t want to face the thousands of excited and happy people in the stands. But Bill, always one to put others’ needs before his own, said to me, “Put your game face on, Kareem. We can’t let the fans down.” We walked out together and he cheerfully greeted fans, signed autographs, waved, and smiled while I slumped in a chair dazed. Afterward, we commiserated together, sharing our fears. Fortunately, Coach Wooden would live another four years, dying at the age of 99.

There’s a reason so many eulogies contain quotes by a famous person from the past. It’s our way of putting our pain in perspective. If someone from a hundred or five hundred or a thousand years ago expressed the same grief as we feel, it helps us accept the death as part of something greater and inevitable rather than as a personal attack. The final stanza of W. H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues” expresses my sadness and anger after hearing of Bill’s passing:

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

That is how I felt—but it is not how Bill would have wanted me to feel. My initial unhappiness and despair would have saddened him and he would have done everything in his considerable power to lighten my load, to cheer me up, to make me see the bright side. Knowing that a person like Bill existed—and that I was lucky enough to be his friend for so many years—actually does cheer me up. Knowing that Bill is still influencing me and will be a treasured part of my life until I’m the next to fall is the bright side.

Despite my grief, there is much joy in knowing that Bill can still make me happy. And always will. In life, that is the only legacy that matters.