Sportscaster and former NBA player Bill Walton attends a game between the USC Trojans and the UCLA Bruins during the Pac-12 Conference basketball tournament semifinals at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nev., on March 11, 2022.Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Philip King is an editor in the sports department at the Globe and Mail.
Bill Walton had led UCLA to two U.S. college basketball titles – including a jaw-dropping performance of shooting 21-for-22 from the field in the 1973 championship game – and had already twice been chosen as the NCAA player of the year, but by that summer, my father only knew him as a hitchhiker.
It would have been hard to miss Walton – a 6-foot-11 redhead who would later describe himself as having a “big nose, freckles and goofy” – as he stood on the side of Highway 11, north of North Bay, Ont., sticking out a thumb. But my father, alone in his car, pulled his Pontiac Ventura onto the side of the road, rolled down the window and asked, “Where are you going?” The freakishly tall man leaned in and replied, “north.”
“Perhaps you know me,” Walton, then 21, slowly told my father as they drove (Walton had a stammer in those days). “Perhaps you’ve heard of the UCLA Bruins basketball team?”
UCLA's Bill Walton, right, fights Notre Dame's Adrian Dantley for a rebound during an NCAA college basketball game in South Bend, Ind., Jan. 19, 1974.The Associated Press
“I’m sorry,” my father said, “but I’ve never heard of them.” My father, who followed the CFL and NHL, was clueless about Walton and oblivious to other sporting events in the United States.
And so for the next several hours, the native of Bolton, Ont., listened in rapt attention – at first he didn’t believe half of what he was being told – and learned about the foreign sport of U.S. college basketball and the tall American man who said he went to school in California. Player of the year, twice? Uh huh. Turned down a chance to play on the 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team? Sure. Pull the other finger.
Eventually, my father came around and realized he was with a future star.
Before meeting Walton, my father’s only near-brush with greatness was seeing boy scout founder Lord Baden-Powell – from a distance – in the Coliseum at Toronto’s Exhibition Place during a jamboree in 1936. But this shaggy hippy character, who shared a long ride on the way to Cochrane, Ont., was much taller. And much closer.
Walton’s fame only grew.
He ended up being a key component in the legendary teams of UCLA coach John Wooden, winning the NCAA player-of-the-year award one more time, being picked first in the 1974 NBA draft, winning numerous individual awards, the league championship twice and eventually becoming a hall-of-famer. Walton also enjoyed a stellar broadcasting career, which itself lasted almost 20 years. He died of cancer this week at age 71.
Over the decades, as my father frequently retold this tale, the car became smaller, Walton became taller, and my father the hero in the story for picking him up. Why was Walton hitchhiking? Why, to go north. And that UCLA basketball team? Why, the best in the world.
Eventually, my father grew to believe Walton would never forget that slow ride in a small Pontiac with no air conditioning and a driver who would steer with one hand and tamp his pipe with the other.
And it appears Walton had remembered it.
Sportsnet reporter Michael Grange, who previously worked for The Globe and Mail, mentioned my father’s hitchhiking anecdote to Walton when he saw him in Toronto several years ago. Walton, Grange wrote on the social-media outlet X on Monday, “thought for a moment, shrugged and said, ‘sounds about right.’”
As they departed, my father asked Walton what he thought about the Toronto Argonauts’ chances in the CFL that season.
“I’m sorry,” Walton said, “but I’ve never heard of them.”