Few sports broadcasters are more polarizing than Bill Walton, who often seems to be talking about everything except the game that he’s actually watching. Yet Walton’s improbable second act as a basketball analyst – overcoming a stutter – is only part of “The Luckiest Guy in the World,” a four-part “30 for 30” docuseries that’s as big and colorful as its subject.
The clips of Walton as a high school student and star at UCLA, struggling to give interviews due to his speech impediment, certainly run counter to his current reputation as the guy who never seems to shut up (even testing those skills on baseball). Yet the series title is tinged with irony, since Walton’s basketball greatness was surely curtailed by a series of then hard-to-diagnose injuries that shortened his NBA career, and have left him hobbled today.
“These legs don’t work anymore,” Walton tells teenagers shooting around.
Director Steve James leaves few stones unturned, talking to Walton along with former teammates at UCLA, Portland and Boston; key opponents, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and Walton’s children, who insist the ebullient fellow who engages in hyperbolic outbursts during Pac-12 basketball is exactly the guy they interact with when watching games at home.
That includes Walton’s political activism, first at UCLA – where he clashed with legendary coach John Wooden over little matters like his hair, and larger ones like protesting the Vietnam war – and in Portland, where his associations with activists earned him a visit from the FBI.
Asked about speaking out at the time, Walton stressed he hadn’t sacrificed his rights as a citizen, telling a reporter, “I’m just a person who happens to play basketball.” On the court, he turned a Portland franchise that had never recorded a winning season into a champion team before injuries sidelined him and, lacking faith in the team’s medical personnel, prompted an ill-advised move to the Clippers, where he had to deal with the team’s subsequently disgraced owner Donald Sterling.
Walton helped win another championship at Boston, where some of the best stories emerge, including the brutal practice sessions and near-hazing he experienced from team veterans Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. Walton also playfully reminisces in what amounts to a round table with his Portland teammates, indicative of the breezy quality the multipart format allows.
There’s obviously some synergy in ESPN featuring one of its own, but “The Luckiest Guy in the World” doesn’t shy away from thornier aspects, including the network dropping Walton for a time and the financial difficulties he experienced afterward; and Walton harboring suicidal thoughts as he suffered with a back injury.
All told, it’s a fascinating portrait of someone, as Bird says, often denied a place in the greatest-player conversation because of those uncooperative legs and feet, but who does appear to be content with where life has led him, and his ability to keep using a mouth that works (and occasionally overworks) just fine.
“The Luckiest Guy in the World” premieres June 6 at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
