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Get started with Greenlight today, and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash odyssey. Steve Futterman is a long-time news correspondent and a friend that I've made over the few years that I've been here at our network, and reached out to me to ask if I'd like to have him as a guest to talk about Bill Walton, and of course, of course I would. So Steve knew him personally. Steve, thank you so much for joining us. I know that this is a bittersweet day, and yet you have such fond memories of Bill.
How come? Well, he was just a great guy. You know, you played that little tease cut there where he talked about growing up in San Diego and being able to listen to Chick Core and the L.A. Laker announcer and the broadcast back then were able to get to San Diego, and the L.A. team at that time, at least the Lakers, were beloved in San Diego. And that made me realize that in truth, although Bill and I never spoke about this, he grew up being a Laker fan, which always made me wonder, how did he feel about giving the Celtics the much, much hated Celtics, if you're a Laker fan, how did he feel giving the Celtics a championship? But that's another sideline to the crazy stories about Bill Walton. There were no consistencies sometimes. Consistencies that he spoke what he felt, always told what he felt, was honest, never held back.
But there were some things that weren't always consistent with Bill Walton. How did you get to know him? I got to know him.
Well, first of all, my first connection with Bill was as a fan. I was a kid growing up in L.A. I remember seeing him at UCLA games. In fact, his first Final Four happened to be in Los Angeles.
I think this was in 1972. The Final Four was in Los Angeles, and I went to the Sports Arena. The arena no longer exists, and saw Bill Walton in the Final Four. So I saw him play growing up, was always a huge UCLA fan. Kareem, I mean, just still am, by the way, big UCLA fan. So I was just an admirer of his, and of course, he won. So I've always followed his career.
Remember very well the famous second Final Four he was in, which was against Memphis State, 21 out of 22 shots he made, and still I think one of the greatest performances in a championship game. And so I've always followed him. But the way I got to know him in this sense was Bill Walton was a news junkie. I became aware that he listened to news, and I'm a newscaster. So he was aware of me, not as much as I was aware of him, but he was aware of me, and we met one time. I'm trying to remember how it first happened, but we did become acquainted. And then every time I would see him, I would say hello. We would talk at times.
We would share stories sometimes. And that's really how I got to know Bill Walton. Steve Futterman is with us now from, are you in LA?
Yeah, in LA. And Steve's a long-time correspondent with CBS News, and I was talking about you earlier, Steve, that not only have you covered events on the world stage, serious events, tragedies, both man-made and natural, but also being a big-time sports fan, I just have remembered you for years covering some of the biggest events on that sports stage. So then when it came to Bill Walton, what type of impression did he leave on you after you were able to speak with him personally?
Oh, I mean, this guy is, he's not trying to seduce you, he's not trying to charm you, but he is what he is. The honesty about Bill Walton is what is, I think, so seductive. As a news reporter, what do we like? We like truth. We like honesty.
We like authenticity. Now, listen, there are some people who are horrible people who are authentic in that way, but Bill Walton was not a horrible person. He was a fun person. He liked to have fun. He was serious in his beliefs.
You know, obviously, if you go way back when, there were a lot of people who were not really fans of Bill Walton. He had a bit of Muhammad Ali in him. If you go back to the early days of Muhammad Ali, refusing to go into the army, refusing to go fight in Vietnam, although it never got to that point, he just refused to be inducted. He also adopted a Muslim name. He went from cashless clay to Muhammad Ali. And he was a loudmouth. So there were things that made, I would say, middle-class, average America not really like Muhammad Ali, but as years went by, they fell in love with him. By the time he lit the torch at the Atlanta Olympics, he was a hero that everyone liked. Bill Walton had a bit of the same thing in him.
Early on, you know, he was always a bit of a, I would say, didn't go with the trend. For example, that first Final Four I talked to you about, UCLA beat Florida State. After the game, UCLA beat the champion. Bill Walton was not very happy. UCLA did not play very well.
They did not dominate the game. He didn't play very well. He was like the most unhappy national championship player you could ever think about. He had the counterculture aspect to him. He was arrested when he was playing at UCLA.
He took part in a sit-in on Wilshire Boulevard, not far from UCLA, an anti-Vietnam War protest. There are pictures of him, if you go on X or Facebook, you'll see there's one great picture of Bill Walton being led to a LAPD bus that was taking people who were being arrested away to be booked. You can tell who he is.
He stands far above the police officers. He had this aspect to him. He was a bit of a, didn't conform to things, and I think it did bother some people.
He went to, obviously, the Portland Trail Blazers, had that counterculture image. He even had a connection, not directly but indirectly, with the Symbionese Liberation Army, Patty Hearst. That was the O.J.
Simpson trial of the 1970s. He didn't ever meet Patty Hearst at that time, but one of the gentlemen he was connected with was a guy named Jack Scott. He was very closely associated with Patty Hearst and her efforts to escape the FBI.
So this was this counterculture image. So I think many people just didn't like Bill Walton. By the end, by today, everyone loves him. He just was a magnificent guy.
I think we saw the side of Bill Walton that I think touched people's hearts more as an announcer. He just had fun. He talked about things. He took some things seriously, but not a lot of things.
Like what things? What did he take seriously? Oh, I think he took his beliefs very seriously.
Very seriously. I think he had very strong political views. I would say they were mostly left of center, but don't think it was always left of center. He had core beliefs that he was for right over wrong, good over evil.
That is not always left or right. That can be sometimes just very mainstream. But he was a man who loved to talk about the Grateful Dead, went to Stanford Law School. I think some people may not realize that, that during his injuries when he was not able to play, he enrolled and was accepted to Stanford Law School. It is not easy to be accepted to Stanford Law School.
I mean, it is one of the toughest law schools to get into. Bill Walton got in. He was a very smart guy. Steve Futterman is with us from L.A. Remembering his friend Bill Walton, who passed away after a battle with cancer at the age of 71.
It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence. I saw as you were reposting some tributes to him, one thing you wrote about Bill is that many of your conversations with him were not about basketball. What's a memorable conversation that had nothing to do with hoops? Well, this one sort of has something to do with hoops.
I'll find another one to tell you. And by the way, I would call myself a professional friend. I mean, there are other colleagues of mine who were much closer to Bill than I was. I mean, Jim Gray, I think, was very close to him, much more than I was.
I would not have put myself in that classification. But we had wonderful times when we would see each other and talk and everything. One of my favorite basketball conversations was when the Lakers had beaten the Celtics in the NBA championship. This was, I believe, Kobe's last championship. So I think we're talking about 2010, something like that.
9, right, 9, 10, yep, somewhere in there. His son Luke was on the team. So the Lakers in that Game 7, I was at the so-called Staples Center, and I think the Lakers fell behind, I think, in the fourth quarter by around 13 points. And I was telling him, I said, you know, being a Laker fan, not a reporter, but as a Laker fan, I said, I was really nervous. He goes, oh, I knew they were going to win. I go, you did not know they were going to win. Oh, I knew they were going to win. How did you know they were going to win?
They were 13 points behind the Celtics. I knew they were going to win. And you had that Bill Walton fall bravado. I wouldn't say it was a real bravado, but a fall bravado where he would say, oh, I knew that was going to happen, even though he knows deep inside he didn't know.
Maybe he wants to say it that way. This is one of the things I think we loved about Bill Walton. He had that fall bravado. He would act like he was always right, but not taking himself seriously. That's another thing I think we liked about Bill Walton, didn't take himself seriously. We had some discussions when he was having some back problems, and just a different tone came over when I talked to him about that. I never knew the seriousness of the pain, but he had talked to me about the pain quite a bit. In that ESPN, I think it was a three-part documentary, brilliant documentary, by the way. If you haven't seen it, you'll really see the whole Bill Walton, and I think you'll probably come away liking him.
Maybe not a guarantee, but I think most people will like him. I never realized this. The pain was so bad, he had thoughts of ending his life at some point. That sort of shocked me. When I saw that, I realized that when we were talking about the pain one time about his back, that it was much more serious than he let on or certainly I ever realized. And his career in the NBA was cut short by some of the injuries that he dealt with, including foot injuries.
Those were the ones that bothered him a lot. And certainly that happens to Center's guys that are as big as him and are carrying around as much weight, so actually didn't survive very long in the NBA. I think he's known more for his time at UCLA and playing for John Wooden, of course, as the iconic coach and as a Hall of Famer, Bill Walton.
Kind of changed the position of Center. Let's say we're 10 years down the road and you're talking to people that didn't know Bill at all. How would you describe him to people? I would say, you see the Joker playing with Denver?
Bill Walton was sort of the prototype of what the Joker is today. A great passer. He loved to pass. We all know that LeBron loves to pass, and he does.
I mean, look at the assists he has. Bill Walton loved to pass even more than LeBron. He loved the fast break. When he was at UCLA, he had another player named Greg Lee on the team.
And he and Greg Lee were very close friends. And they just had a wonderful connection on the fast break. He would get the rebound, he'd throw it out. The outlet pass was amazing for him. He loved the give-and-go. And he loved to block the ball and keep the ball in play. He didn't like to knock it out of bounds. He liked to keep the ball in play and sometimes almost send it to a UCLA player. You brought up UCLA and John Wooden, by the way. I mentioned his arrest at UCLA. John Wooden was the one who bailed him out. Oh, that's amazing.
That's amazing. Just the total, at least visually, the total opposite of Bill Walton. You know, the long hair, sitting on the streets.
I mean, Wilshire Boulevard, if you've ever been to LA, is one of the major streets in LA, blocking traffic. He's arrested there. John Wooden, middle, middle class from Indiana, God-fearing, so conservative in many ways, but not every way, by the way, a bit like Walton, and he bailed him out. And they, by the way, were so devoted to each other. That's quite a friendship.
That's one of the great friendships around John Wooden and Bill Walton. Steve Futterman is with us here after hours with Amy Lawrence. Before I let you go, Steve, you posted the words from a text that Bill sent to you last year. Would you mind please telling us about that? Well, I mean, I came across it today.
I didn't realize it. And he sent me a text last year just responding to something. And when I saw it, it almost gave me shivers because it almost, I mean, the way I posted it, it almost sounded like these were, like, final words from him, not just to me, but to everyone. So I'll read it for you, and I'll try not to break up.
I'm a very, I'm one of these three-eyed people in many ways. So let me find it, and I'll read it to you. Again, it was quite moving. And, you know, I can't speak for Bill, but I have a feeling he might not mind these being his, you know, last farewell to everyone. He said, he said, thanks, Steve. He's responding. He goes, I tried. I look forward to our futures together. Shine on, heal on.
Bill Walton, the luckiest guy in the world, from the bright side of the road. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, it's just, again, it was quite touching and a bit shocking when I realized that, and I said, this is what, you know, if I asked Bill, what would your final words be? I don't know if he would have said this, but I can imagine him saying something like that. I liked when he said, I look forward to our futures together. Was that the last time that you communicated with him? No, no, no. We had a few more communications.
Okay, good. But that was last year. Almost just a few weeks shy of exactly a year.
It was from June of last year. Did he ever speak about his battle with cancer? No, I was not aware of it at all. I talked to some people who are close to him. I do believe, having heard today Danny Ainge speak, I think his close friends were aware that there were some serious problems going on and that he might be in very, very failing health. I was not aware of it at all.
Caught me totally by surprise. I did talk to some people who had lesser connections, former teammates who became aware of it. Apparently he stopped all broadcasting in March, and that may have given some of those in the broadcasting field who do play-by-play stuff a hint that he had some serious health problems.
I was not aware of it at all. It sounded like he wanted to keep it private for his family and his closest friends and not make a big deal out of it. But he was a big deal. Everywhere he went, it turned into a big deal. Steve, it's so wonderful to get your reflections and your personal connection and conversations with Bill.
Thank you so much for sharing them with us and giving us some insight into who he was off the basketball court and away from prying eyes. Yeah, no, he was amazing. He was eccentric, but again, he was these contradictions. He could be this way. He could be that way. He could be conservative. We knew he could be liberal. He could also be conservative. He was wild and goofy.
He could be very serious. He was loving, loved his kids so much. Another thing I think many people who know Bill Walton know about this, but if you're not that much into him, Luke Walton was named after Maurice Lucas, who was probably maybe his all-time best friend as a teammate with the Portland Trail Blazers.
He named his first son after Maurice Lucas. Steve, it's so good to talk to you. Thank you so much for offering. I hope that we cross paths again soon. Yes, Amy.
Anytime. Kendall and Kylie are back and continue to defy expectations in all their endeavors. So, get ready to go behind the glitz and glamour of the most iconic family on television.
The all-new season of The Kardashians is now streaming on Hulu. Welcome to Natayada Island. This season on Natayada Island. When we were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone.
But then, it's like I didn't exist. Don't take yatayada from your wireless carrier. Now with Metro, get that new customer feeling again and again.
Introducing Metroflex. Free 5G phones when you join, same deals with new customers when you stay. Only at Metro by T-Mobile. Just bring your number and ID and sign up for an eligible plan. After 12 months, trade in and get our best deals on select devices.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-05-28 07:32:00 / 2024-05-28 07:40:18 / 8