I literally groaned out loud — and I have to imagine a lot of Washington Huskies fans share my pain — when I turned on the TV this past week to watch the two Huskies basketball games in Arizona to discover that yes, Bill Walton really is still on the air.
Still … after all these years. After I thought I was long done ever hearing his voice again.
I don’t get the Pac-12 Network, so I’ve thankfully missed Walton over the past seven years. In fact, until last week, I think it had been a good 15 years since I had last heard him on the air.
Unfortunately, ESPN partners with the Pac-12 Network to show Pac-12 basketball. Equally unfortunate, now that the Huskies are really good, the Pac-12 Network is making the Huskies their showcase games, which means … “Walton” (said in my Jerry Seinfeld “Newman” voice).
Well, after listening to Walton during two Huskies games last week, I came not to praise Bill Walton, but I’m not exactly going to bury him. Completely.
Twenty-five years ago, Walton filled me with the urge to throw a brick through my television. Today, he has an utterly different shtick than he did in the 1990s. I’m more filled with the urge to simply mute the sound. I guess you could call it progress.
Met him at Mono Lake
True story, I actually met Walton once. I was working for the U.S. Forest Service as an natural history interpreter at the Mono Lake Visitor’s Center in eastern California in 1992 and Walton walked into the visitor’s center with a couple of kids in tow (one of them might have been Luke Walton, the coach of the Lakers, I don’t know).
And yes, he was actually wearing a Grateful Dead tie-dye T-shirt. It was a hot day and he was wearing shorts with heavily scarred knees. I didn’t realize he had knee injuries. I knew all about his infamous foot injuries. I immediately recognized who he was and asked him to autograph the only thing I had to write on, a copy of the L.A. Times sports section. He came off a little grouchy about it, but he did give me an autograph and I didn’t pester him any more than I already had. I still have that autograph to this day.
Remember the Sonics series?
Fast forward about four years later. I was a sports editor in the San Juan Islands and that was the year the Seattle Supersonics made the NBA Finals. Unfortunately, it was also the year they went up against the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, arguably the greatest team in NBA history.
Anyone who watched that series probably remembers how Walton pretty much ragged on the Sonics nonstop during the Finals. This was a team that went 64-18 and managed to at least take a 72-10 Bulls team to six games. No other team in the postseason beat the Bulls even once, much less twice. But, it was relentless negativity and criticism from Walton for six games about how much the Sonics sucked. I remember my editor in the San Juans, Ted Grossman, absolutely going on these rants the mornings after those Finals games, raging about how much he hated Walton.
Well, after that, I think pretty much everyone in Seattle wanted Walton’s head. I often wondered how long it was before Walton dared show himself in Seattle again. It sure appeared to me that he was still angry about the Sonics beating the Trail Blazers in the 1978 Western Conference playoffs and had never let it go.
I was definitely not a fan of his broadcasting style back then. I found him exceedingly negative and hyper-critical. He seemed to go out of his way to be a professional contrarian — trying to be the Howard Cosell of basketball. He was a curmudgeon. A scold. In short, he had embraced the role of a broadcasting villain. Joe Morgan had adopted a similar role broadcasting baseball and was so reviled that people created a popular Website called “Fire Joe Morgan,” which became more about bad announcing in general in media beyond Morgan. (And Morgan eventually was fired).
Walton’s partner back in the 90s was a guy named Steve “Snapper” Jones, who was fantastic. Jones and Walton were apparently actually good friends. You could tell that Jones didn’t take Walton too seriously and would take him to task for some of his more ridiculous comments, using searing logic to deconstruct Walton’s outrageous statements. My favorite would be when Walton would bellow, “That’s a TURRIBLE shot!” just as the ball would swish through the net. And Jones would let Walton have it. I swear it happened at least once or twice virtually every game.
The Sonics series might have been the low point for Walton, but he sunk lower. A few years later, he was teamed with Tom Tolbert, a talented and witty analyst and former NBA player who now works as a broadcaster in the San Francisco Bay Area. Walton and Tolbert used to absolutely attack each other on-air. And unlike Walton’s semi-playful banter with Jones, this was not fun. It was absolutely cringeworthy. It was bitter, sneering, snide sniping. They clearly detested each other. It was incredibly unprofessional. You’d turn on the NBA game of the week and it was like watching Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Exceedingly uncomfortable.
Tolbert and Walton used to spend the entire game absolutely digging and insulting at each other. I ended up feeling sorry for Tolbert, who could barely get a word in edgewise without Walton trying to one-up him and slam him down. I think their partnership only lasted a year or two.
About that time, I pretty much stopped paying attention to the NBA, mostly because the game had become overly defensive and boring. But, I would always watch the NBA Finals and thankfully, Walton had been taken off the Finals by ABC/ESPN.
So, I figure before I heard him on the Huskies broadcasts last week, it was probably the early 2000s since I had last heard him call a game.
Different shtick
I was surprised to discover that his act had changed … dramatically. He’s no longer a scold and curmudgeon, he’s now mostly a goofball, a court jester. He tends to babble — nonstop — on a wide variety of topics, from the beauty of the Sonoran desert to the Center for Biological Diversity to the “economic miracle” of Tempe to having dinner with the parents of a Huskies player … and then getting their names completely wrong.
Unfortunately, as anyone who watched the past two Huskies games knows, he doesn’t really pay much attention to the actual game. He’s too busy prattling on about the God knows what and bellowing “the Conference of Champions!” — A phrase he repeats over and over all game long like some kind of mantra — any time any player for either team makes a good play.
I give Walton credit for reinventing himself from his old, abrasive Howard Cosell routine, but I’m not sure his new “Clown Prince of the Pac-12” shtick — and I do believe it is a shtick — is all that big of an improvement. People online joke that he’s stoned. I’m not sure he is, but if he isn’t stoned, then he’s pretending. Remember Foster Brooks, the 1970s comedian who pretended to be drunk? That’s who Walton reminds me of now.
I’m not sure what keeps Walton employed, honestly. I researched a bit on online forums and he definitely does have his fans, who find his antics entertaining. Much like 25 years ago, he also continues to have a lot of detractors who can’t stand his act. At best, he’s polarizing. I don’t know, maybe he actually helps the Pac-12 Network’s ratings. Personally, I consider it a sideshow that doesn’t really add to the game. It’s just a distraction. I’d much prefer an analyst who is actually paying some semblance of attention to the game. Maybe now I’m the curmudgeon. Maybe it’s my lifelong annoyance with Deadheads.
I would dearly love to be able to watch the Huskies on ESPN without having to endure Walton. But, for what it’s worth, he seems happy and seems to be enjoying life (And Walton has publicly talked about his struggles with physical pain and thoughts of suicide.). And ESPN and the Pac-12 are allowing him to do his routine on their platform for whatever reason, so I guess more power to him.
That being said, if I hear him on a Huskies game again, I’ll probably be reaching for the mute button.
The Associated Press The Pac-12 Network’s Bill Walton broadcast both of the Washington Huskies games last week in Arizona.
