Bill Walton! Amazing Life! We are Grateful, Yes

    No intention to make the pun about the Grateful Dead, but perhaps Bill himself would appreciate the humor. I had a college roommate, named Patrick, who was family friends with the Walton family in Del Mar, California. The Waltons are certainly a famous and successful, an admirable group of people. The parents of Bill were good and unique, did a great job. I saw a special about Bill's life a year or so ago.

    Bill was a good example of American and human victory and achievement. He was, as the news reports are now touting, "one of a kind". 

    He went to UCLA and triumphed there, with perhaps the best coach of all-time, John Wooden. That was the end of that era in the 1970s. Then he won with the Trailblazers in Portland, and eventually the Larry Bird-led Celtics.

    I write this as the Pacers lose the Eastern Conference Finals to the Celtics, jobbed by the so-called referees who could not make the flagrant foul call when TJ McConnell of the Pacers was clobbered in the face by Jaylen Brown. AWFUL, officials. You had the benefit of instant replay review? EGREGIOUS and DESPICABLE, for a game that is supposed to be regulated. Garbage. Anyway, sorry, I digress. 

    Bill Walton did some tremendous broadcasting as a sportscaster. He was funny, enlightening, off-the-wall, entertaining. You had to love the guy. I did. I appreciated his weirdness and his brilliance.

    His Conference of Champions Pac-12 is now on its last legs, ironically as he has succumbed to cancer.

    Rock on, Crazy Bill. We loved you; you were great in so many senses. You were part and parcel of the excellence of life and what we are as humans. Frail yet incredibly strong. Funny yet wise.

    Walton, a giant in stature, character, achievement, and energy.

    Oh, the cosmic karma is flowing hard, tonight my brother!

    Rock on; we will be eternally grateful in life and in death, and into all the universe.

    Shaka, bra. Gonna catch some waves in your name.