I always wondered what he could have done in the NBA had he not had all these injuries.
He's in the HOF as he should be but how many more rings and MVPs could he have had.
The guy's teams just did not lose (HS and UCLA). 88 game win streak while at UCLA along with his last two year at HS
put his win streak at some 140+ games.
RIP Bill Walton. You were one great player.
That's why I would want no part of playing for the Portland Trailblazers if I had NBA talent. Those fuckheads shot him up with painkillers and had him play on an ugly stress fracture until his foot snapped in 1978 because durr we're 50-10 right now, to hell with the career of one of the most talented and unique players to ever come into the league. I don't think it's an accident that they keep losing their best players to career ending injuries. See Brandon Roy and Greg Oden. Oden was such an amazing prospect I knew who he was when he was 14, and god I hated when Portland won the lottery to select him.
Walton having his career destroyed by trusting the Trail Blazers is one of the biggest gut punches ever in sports. The guy played defense like Tim Duncan, he was as devastating as Bill Russell in getting his team on the break and finding them in positions to get easy buckets in transition, could score on the block like Duncan, but was also Jokic in the half-court setting his teammates up. Easily the greatest passing bigman until Jokic. I don't think it's a stretch to say Walton could have been the greatest bigman to ever play without that fracture of his foot that the Trailblazers caused. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wasn't going to lead a team of Maurice Lucas, Bob Gross, and Lionel Hollins to a title but Walton did, and they were even better the next year despite him playing on that ticking time bomb of a stress fracture. I feel like we were robbed not getting to see Walton have a full career but it was beautiful seeing him have that one healthy year again in 1985-86 as the sixth man of arguably the greatest team in NBA history (86 Celtics).
RIP Bill, there was never a more talented bigman than you.