Dave Boling: Remember Bill Walton as one of basketball’s great poets, on and off the court

May 27—Today’s column fulfills a promise I made to Bill Walton.

Not that we were buddies or anything, or that I have any extensive insights into his extraordinary life. But a promise is a promise.

Walton, in the pantheon of great basketball players, college and pro, died on Memorial Day of cancer.

In January, 2023, I’d been writing a number of columns on the exploits of Gonzaga’s All-America big man Drew Timme.

Timme was such a charismatic and joyful player, endlessly creative in the lane and on the baseline, and such a sensational teammate and representative of the university, it seemed that almost every game demanded praise of his work.

But you can’t beat the same drum at the same tempo all season, so I wanted to find somebody else to comment on Timme.

In some specific ways, in a somewhat smaller font, Timme’s play was reminiscent of Walton’s at UCLA in the early 1970s.

I got some contact info from a media friend and took a shot with a text to Walton, asking if he could spare a few minutes of his valuable time to talk about Timme.

He got right back to me and went on for well over half an hour in one of the most memorable, wild and wide-ranging interviews ever.

“I love Drew Timme,” Walton said. “He’s an exuberant force of nature like few others. He plays with boundless enthusiasm, he’s got an incredible skill level, he’s got a mind that separates him from the crowd … he has the creativity of a genius and he has a very vivid imagination. And he’s super fun. What’s not to love?”

I didn’t tell him at the time, because when a source starts talking like this, you’re a fool to slow him down, but his description of Timme sounded to me a lot like a description of Walton, himself.

His own exuberant commentary, hyperbole and non-sequiturs polarized some basketball broadcast viewers.

What critics forgot was that you can’t take poets or philosophers literally.

Some felt he wasn’t talking enough about the basketball game in front of him. I think they failed to see that he was talking, in a…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/dave-boling-remember-bill-walton-020200003.html

Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Publish date : 2024-05-28 02:02:00

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