Bill Walton once said his dream Final Four field would include five Pac-12 Conference teams. He repeated the motto “Conference of Champions” on basketball broadcasts as if he was being paid by the number of references he could fit into one game.
It wasn’t an act — it was Walton being Walton, as colorful as one of the tie-dye shirts the avowed Grateful Dead fan loved to wear.
Walton, the giant redhead whose basketball prowess at UCLA and in the NBA was surpassed only by his zest for life and all its absurdities, died Monday while surrounded by family after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 71.
“The world feels so much heavier now,” fellow legendary Bruins big man Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) alongside a picture of the two men smiling with their arms draped across one another. “On the court, Bill was a fierce player, but off the court he wasn’t happy unless he did everything he could to make everyone around him happy. He was the best of us.”
