Here comes the son: Luke Walton and Arizona coming to town
When all testimony had been heard in the Great Kit Kat Caper; when all discovery and deposition was complete; after indictments were sealed and passion finally drained out of closing arguments, no culpability could be assigned Arizona basketball players in the Case of the Purloined Paydays.
There would be no retribution for the Hershey Heist. The 'Cats were proclaimed innocent of being Snickers Snatchers.
That means all the second-ranked Wildcats will be in town tomorrow night to play Washington. That includes Luke Walton, who was identified by a witness at a Lawrence, Kan., motel as the guy playing lookout while a couple of teammates allegedly emptied a vending machine of its confections 11 days ago. If the Wildcats were in any way involved, they shook off the sugar high and drubbed Kansas, 91-74.
Maybe the witness merely assumed what a lot of us have known for a while: that Walton is the glue that caulks the frailties of this Arizona basketball team, however few.
What Walton is, is the Holy Grail of basketball coaches, the big player who can bridge the difference between the sleight-of-hand skills of guards and the heavy-handed assets of the guys inside. Walton can pass, handle the ball and shoot, and he's 6 feet 8 and weighs 240.
"He has the best basketball IQ in the country," says Jay John, the first-year Oregon State coach who assisted at Arizona before that.
"You really don't know how to guard him. Basically, a lot of what Coach (Lute Olson) does is, whoever they put on him, that's how they run their offense. Put a small guy on him, he runs inside. Put a bigger guy on him, he takes him outside."
Luke's averages — 8.6 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists — are essentially meaningless because he spent the first two months of the season in and out of ankle sprains.
What you need to know is that his 6.3 assists per game last season allowed a big guy to lead the Pac-10 for the first time, and that he played 36 minutes last weekend against Stanford.
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"I've always tried to impress upon my sons that a life not lived for others is not a life," says Bill Walton.
"When you extrapolate that to basketball, a game not played for others is not a game."
Luke is thus a living, breathing, 1970-yellow-Cadillac-convertible-
driving extension of an earlier time, a reminder of two golden snapshots of the game.
One was in the early '70s, when Bill Walton, as a center at UCLA, was a three-time player of the year and led the Bruins to two national titles, partly with a wonderful gift for passing. He turned in the defining performance by an individual in an NCAA championship game, hitting 21 of 22 field-goal attempts to beat Memphis State in the 1973 final at St. Louis.
The second came shortly after, when he joined the Portland Trail Blazers. Walton grew his hair out, wore a headband and lived what was perceived as almost a counterculture life in the woods outside Portland.
Oh yes. After a horrendous series of what he calls undiagnosed stress fractures of his feet, he became the cynosure of one of the most unselfish, entertaining teams in NBA history, one that captured the league championship in 1977.
"A perfect time, a perfect place," says Walton. "I just wish it had lasted forever. I loved that team."
One of the guys he loved was the starting small forward, Bob Gross, who was one of those glue guys who could move without the ball and hit the open man.
Today, when Olson is asked whose play Luke Walton's approximates, he goes back to a guy he coached at Long Beach State in the '70s.
"Bobby Gross," Olson says.
But the one who left the largest imprint on Bill Walton was the player he named Luke after. Maurice Lucas was a 6-9 enforcer who backed down the 76ers in a dustup in the '77 finals.
"The greatest teammate I ever had," Walton says.
As a UCLA player, Bill Walton was a deep public enigma. His coach, the fabled John Wooden, was fond of curbing interviews with all his players. Only with the Blazers did Walton's persona become open to others.
He took up liberal causes, believed in the sanctity of the body and bonded with the Oregon outdoors. One day he was biking in the headlands off the Oregon coast, saw a teepee over a bluff and asked the owner how he could get one. He has since owned several and still has one in the backyard of his San Diego homestead.
Bill and his ex-wife, Susie, had four sons, all of whom have played college basketball — Adam, Nate, Luke and Chris, the youngest, who is redshirting at San Diego State.
"When we were little, my dad didn't tell us ghost stories about the bogeyman," Nate was quoted as saying last year in Sports Illustrated. "We heard stories about Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon."
The senior Walton was one of the original Deadheads, forever wedded to Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. He began going to their concerts in the late '60s and figures he's attended more than 600.
"I've been to five or six," Luke scoffs. "He's been to Egypt with them."
Luke's shoulder tattoo, featuring four skeletons spinning basketballs, commemorates both the brotherhood and the Dead, a band the kids spent time around.
In the twilight of Bill's career, when he was with Boston, the boys also played in the driveway with Larry Bird. If the kids didn't learn from their dad that the basketball was for passing, it was further ingrained by Larry Legend.
The Cadillac? It was another artifact that has transcended time. Luke says his oldest brother bought it, and it's been passed down through the family.
"There's a lot of miles on it," Luke says. "I think it's already gone through (100,000) a couple of times. It runs perfect."
"He drives about 25 miles an hour around Tucson," says John, chuckling. "It's like he's in a parade, waving to everybody."
Luke and his father seem close, although who knows how many nights Bill missed while he was playing and calling games.
"That's always the thing that gnaws at you," Bill says.
"That's why I raced home for every possible minute."
Says Luke, "He's always been there for me. He's done everything he could do. We call each other at least once a week."
Encircled, somehow, in this weave of Jerry Garcia and dancing skeletons and classic cars and Bill Walton's quixotic past in Oregon is the stately, 68-year-old Olson.
Maybe it all makes sense; the senior Walton relates Olson to his former coach, whom he calls on the phone almost every day.
"Coach Olson," says Bill Walton, "is the 21st-century version of John Wooden."
As he speaks, his third son shuffles into his home and mulls a selection on the jukebox. Luke's choice?
"Practice sessions from the Dead and Bob Dylan when they were getting ready for their tour," Bill says.
The apple doesn't appear to have fallen too far from the tree. And Luke's Arizona team, capable of winning impressively at Kansas, capable of losing at home to Stanford, seems to reflect one of Bill's reveries relating endless nights with the Dead to the possibilities on a basketball floor.
The elements are similar. But the results can be so different. Every outing is an odyssey waiting to be traveled.
"The electricity, the creativity, the excitement, the teamwork, the emotions, the imagination," marveled Luke Walton's dad, "it's all very special."
Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com.