Bill Walton Is All About the Bike
From his childhood days in San Diego, the basketball legend’s life has been as much about the bicycle as the game that made him famous
PHOTO: SCOTT POLLACK
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In my cycling life, I’ve talked to a lot of charismatic bike nuts—men and women who believe bikes are magic, cars are meaningless, love to ride more than any other human activity, and may sleep in Lycra pajamas and a tiny hat, dreaming of ascending Provence’s Mont Ventoux.
But I don’t think I’ve talked to someone who loves to ride a bicycle as much as Bill Walton.
“I love to ride all day,” Walton told me on a recent afternoon, in a telephone interview. “My dream is to do 100 miles a day. Get up, have breakfast, get going, ride all day, stop for lunch, ride, come home, take a swim, take a Jacuzzi, have a hot shower, have dinner, go to bed, get up and do it again, day after day.”
You see what I mean.
AdvertisementWalton, of course, is primarily known as one of the greatest basketball players of all time—a red-haired, free-spirited 6-foot-11 big man for John Wooden’s historic UCLA Bruins, and then in the NBA, winning a title and an MVP with the Portland Trail Blazers and then another ring with the Boston Celtics. But from his childhood days in San Diego, Walton’s life has been as much about the bicycle as the game that made him famous.
“I’d ride to the gym, play basketball, ride home, ride to school, and ride for fun, just ride all around town.” Walton said. “Then I went to college and immediately fell in with a lot of the Olympic and pro cyclists who were living and training in Los Angeles, including (Olympian and one-time bicycle land speed record holder) John Howard, with whom I am still very close today.”
“He’s always been very energetic,” Howard said Wednesday. “While he is not fast, he makes up for it with a great deal of enthusiasm.”
When Walton lived in Portland, he rode his bike to Blazers games and the city’s 1977 championship parade. He rode around the Columbia River Gorge and up and down the Willamette Valley. When he moved to the San Diego Clippers as a free agent in 1979, Walton rode with riders from the U.S. national team who stayed at a hotel not far from his home. But he often rides alone.
“Bicycling is like basketball in that you don’t have to wait for anything—you just go,” he said. “These other sports, you’re standing around with other people, waiting for action to come your way.”
If you have ever heard Walton being interviewed, or followed Walton’s post-basketball career as a television analyst, you know how loquacious and passionate he can be. You could ask Walton what he had for dinner, and by the time he’s through describing it, you’ll be ready to vote his dinner for president.
From left to right: Bill Walton, Eddy Merckx and Greg LeMond. PHOTO: BILL WALTON
It’s the same way with bikes. I had briefly run into Walton a few years back at a Tour of California stage in downtown Los Angeles, and I was struck by his fever for the sport. This was a guy who once dragged a writer for Sports Illustrated on a two-day, 150-mile odyssey down the Pacific Coast Highway, who speaks lovingly of Hans Ort’s long-gone bicycle shop near UCLA, who has ridden with icons like Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, Belgian all-timer Eddy Merckx, and, of course, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir.
(“He’s more of a mountain biker,” Bill said of Bob.)
Like every cycling obsessive, Walton can get wonky about the minutiae. He can talk stems and cranks and shoes. (The Italian bike shoe manufacturer Sidi made a shoe that fits Walton’s size 17 foot. “It’s a whole new world!” he exclaimed.) He rides custom road bikes made by the acclaimed San Diego builder Bill Holland, with a seat tube height that Walton said is 70 centimeters (the most common men’s cycling frames tend to run 54-56 cm.) “I love the team aspect, the science, the technology, the exercise physiology, the nutrition, the gels, the powders, the chews…”
Walton didn't want to give the wrong impression, however. “I am not a good cyclist,” he insisted. Over the years, he said, he’d acquired nicknames like Crash and Always Lost. With a pair of fused ankles, he doesn't have an optimal pedal stroke; only recently had Howard talked him into finally using clipless pedals. “Most people don’t like to ride with me because I ride so slow.”
Walton told a story about a charity ride he was on from San Francisco to San Diego in which the former U.S. pro Christian Vande Velde came up from behind him. “I hear, ‘Bill, let’s go!’” Walton recalls. “Then he said as he passed me: ‘Bill, I didn’t know it was humanly possible to ride a bike that slow and still stay upright.’”
Said Vande Velde the other day: “He is the definition of legend.”
Walton is 63 now. He said he hasn't played basketball in decades. Often injured as a player, he has spent much of his life grappling with pain—agony and recovery he chronicles as part of a new memoir, “Back From the Dead,” published by Simon & Schuster last month.
In it, he writes: My bike is the most important thing I have. It is my gym, my wheelchair and my church all in one.
“I see him riding everywhere,” said Howard. “Even late at night.”
“I’m more comfortable on my bike than anything else I do,” Walton said. “The longer I ride, the better I feel.” These days, he said, he has no pain, and takes no medication.
“My bike is my medicine,” he said. “I’m always sick of something or somebody, and I know that when I go out on my bike, my bike makes me happy.”
I’m not going to argue with any of that. If you ride, you know exactly what Bill Walton means.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
