Throw It Down, Big Man! Throw It Down!
“Ain’t it just like the wind to play tricks…
Oh my God. Is this really happening? This can’t actually be happening.
…when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet…
Is Bill Walton actually reciting Bob Dylan to me? Does this have anything to do with my question? What did I even ask him? It doesn’t matter at this point. Just nod intently, and stop grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.
…And these visions of Johanna…
Is he going to do the whole thing? Nah…there’s no way he’ll do the whole thing. God, I hope he does the whole thing.
…kept me up…past the dawn.”
*What seem like twenty minutes of either sublimely profound or excruciatingly awkward silence follow*
Then Jason Quick asked Bill another question, and I was free of his trance. For the moment.
I had chosen to sit front-and-center, maybe five feet from Walton. I thought that would put me in excellent position to record audio and snap photos, and it did. What I forgot was that it also put me directly in The Big Granola’s line of fire. I simply wasn’t prepared for the Bill Walton Experience. I’ve followed the Blazers my whole life, and I figured that I had done enough interviews and talked to enough athletes that talking to one more wouldn’t phase me. But I was lying to myself. Let me back up a bit so that I can provide some context for you guys.
When I arrived at the arena…wait, actually, I think I need to go back a little further.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. Mom and Dad were divorced, and for stretches of time neither house was what you’d call a fun place to live. But my grandparents were always there for me. They treated me like I mattered. They were the best.
They also had cable TV, which is the most important thing as far as this story goes.
I would sit for hours in the back bedroom, my eyes fixed on the small set sitting on the dresser by the foot of the bed. Every day, I watched the same channel: Classic Sports Network (later to become ESPN Classic). I studied all the greats from the foot of that bed — Cousy, Chamberlain, Baylor, Tiny, King, Magic, Bird, Dominique, Jordan — but always with a twinge of sad frustration. I saw plenty of teams win the big one and douse each other with champagne, just never my Trail Blazers.
Then one day, that changed. Two words should tell you all you need to know: Game Six.
Bill Walton was a mutant, and he wore red and black. Twenty points, 23 boards, eight blocks, seven dimes — I could barely contain myself. My eight year-old brain was going to explode. Up to that point, I had watched the Drexler/Porter/Buck/Duck/Kersey teams, but I was too young to put that ‘92 Finals trip into perspective. This was different. I knew this would stick with me.
And it did, all the way through middle and high school, through my career as a journalism student in Eugene, all the way up until I pulled into the Rose Garden’s annex parking lot yesterday. Whenever friends would make fun of Bill’s hyperbole-infused delivery in the booth, I would just laugh and enjoy it. I knew what this man had done for Portland. I had seen it.
Of course, what I had seen — indeed anything and everything I “knew” about Walton — had been garnered by watching his television persona. I did not truly know him, but I pretended like any fan trying to feel more connected to a team, a band, a public figure, or in this case, an NBA Championship won 8 years before my birth.
As I turned onto Drexler Drive, I struggled with the daunting task of keeping my inner child in so that my outer journalist could actually get something done that day. Expectations were met with mixed results, as you might have guessed, but the day could not have gotten off to a more inauspicious start.
First of all, the big fella was late. I mean, really late. At least a half an hour. There were only a few media personnel in the room — Jason Quick, Brian T. Smith, Ben from BlazersEdge, Casey Holdahl, and a few others. As more and more time passed, I could feel the discontent filling up the room like somebody had set off an angst-filled gas grenade. Every minute felt like an hour. We were told he was on his way. Then he was upstairs. Then he was in an elevator. The great Bill Schonely even made a joke about how somebody must have asked Walton a question for him to be this late.
Both the high and the low of the pregame occurred when a photographer literally fell asleep. As a joke, Quick yelled at him to wake up.
“I’ll wake up when there’s something to wake up for,” he said.
I knew that Walton was in town for the Make It Better benefit and to accept the Governor’s Gold Award for the ‘77 championship, but I had also heard from someone (who knows more than I do) that he had to be paid to come up here, and it was likely to be a contrived affair. The first 45 minutes I spent in that room, I began to believe it. Worse than that, I had gone from genuinely excited about the covering the event to worried not only that one of my boyhood heroes was a flake, but also that I wouldn’t capture anything useful for the site.
Turns out my worries were unneccessary on both accounts. As Bill (finally) entered the room, he had a giant smile on his face, surveying the field of play. Then he started to talk. And he talked. And he talked.
And he talked.
But nobody was complaining. Walton spent the first 15 minutes (guided by great questions from Quick) reminiscing about how perfect the situation in Portland could have been and should have been, and how much regret he has to this day about being unable to return and reward the support of Blazer fans with another championship by staying both healthy and a member of the franchise.
These weren’t canned answers Walton was throwing out. This was anything but contrived. His responses, his emotion, they were genuine. I could tell that he was so happy to be back by the way he spoke about the city — the way he spoke about his former teammates. Of course there was a little “pomp and circumstance” in his tone, but that’s just how Walton talks. Nobody has ever accused Bill (at least not in the last 15 years) of being understated, and Friday was no different. But underneath the over-the-top delivery lied real pain and real hope and real feelings. And that was cool.
The highlight of my hour occured when I finally gathered the courage to ask a question. Being the nervous and generally incompetent type, I tend to ask pretty long-winded questions so that by the end I’m actually able to articulate what I wanted to ask at the beginning. Well, I started setting up my question about the ‘77 squad’s improbable comeback from two games down to beat the star-studded 76ers, and as I’m in the middle of asking how in the world they won that series, Walton gives me a little double take. I could tell he was listening to my question, but what he was really doing was trying to guess how old I was. As I finally wrapped it up, his curious look changed to something else, and I still can’t quite put my finger on it.
Pride? Satisfaction? Bemusement? Probably a combination of all three. Whatever it was, the look on his face said, “You’re not old enough to be asking this question, but you are. Portland still remembers that title. Even the young guys — who weren’t even born yet — somehow, they remember that title.”
And then, as you know, Big Bill serenaded me with some Garcia Plays Dylan.
As the presser wrapped up, I hurriedly stuffed my gear into my duffel, one eye on the clock and another on Jason Quick. If I didn’t leave in the next five minutes, I would be late for work. I tried to get to Walton first, but Jason lived up to his namesake and beat me there. I knew that if Quick finished his question and Walton started talking that I could probably go work my shift, come back, and Walton still wouldn’t be done with his response. So I struck like a cobra.
“Hey yo, Jason. I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish, but Bill Walton, meeting you was one of the coolest experiences of all time. Of all time.”
That’s a paraphrase, of course. What I actually did was interrupt rudely and then apologize profusely, quickly shaking Walton’s hand while explaining that I had to leave to go to my real job.
“Real job???” bellowed Walton. “What’s THAT???”
As I made my way to the exit. I thought of two things: First, I hoped that Jason Quick, for whom I have a ton of respect, didn’t now hate my guts after my Kanye impression in the media room. Second, I decided that Bill Walton had met all expectations, and I was grateful for the opportunity to meet such an important figure to both the Trail Blazers and the game of basketball.
Although, I still kind of wish he had worn his Grateful Dead tee.
