Bill Walton’s former broadcast partner reveals HILARIOUS text messages

Fans of basketball, hippie culture and sports media are mourning the loss of Bill Walton this week, but the hyperbolic Hall of Famer’s death from cancer at age 71 is also giving way to a bevvy of hilarious stories about the Redhead Deadhead.

Walton’s former broadcast partner, Dave Pasch, got in the spirit on Monday by sharing some of his favorite text messages with the eccentric two-time NBA champion, who proved to be every bit as verbose over electronic communications as he was in person.

‘Bill Walton’s nickname for me was ”Coal,” and he would call himself ”Solar,”’ ESPN’s Pasch wrote on X. ‘He would playfully say I was living in the past, while he was the future. As I was going through many old texts from him, laughing my butt off, this one got me. Bill was an all time ball buster!’

Pasch’s post included a picture Walton sent him of a highway exit sign for ‘Lead Ave’ and ‘Coal Ave’ in July of 2018. Along with the picture, Walton wrote: ‘Please, we are nearby, can Dave come out and [play?]

‘It is Dave, right???’

Pasch’s trip down memory lane was far from finished.

‘Bill would text me during games I was broadcasting, and pretend he didn’t know I was doing it, but ask if I was watching,’ Pasch wrote in another post, alongside four different grabs of Walton texts.

‘Are you watching this masterpiece?’ Walton asked in one message. ‘UCLA @ UW.’

Walton continued: ‘I have no idea who’s calling the game, but the guy is stealing your lines.’

In another message, Walton asked Pasch about a New York Knicks-Cleveland Cavaliers game that the latter happened to be calling at the time.

‘Hope you’re watching this Knick/Cavs game,’ Walton wrote to Pasch, adding: ‘Hopefully the announcer will reset the scene for you.’

As Pasch explained, he would also receive ‘random out of nowhere texts’ from Walton.

‘I love you,’ Walton wrote in one. ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

‘Are you watching this Rams/AC FB game,’ Walton asked in an inexplicable text message from 2022. ‘Wow, now this is some football… Boom!!’

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One message from 2018 offered a good example of Walton’s communication style, which could be best described as a ‘stream of consciousness.’

‘Please who is this???’ Walton began the message. ‘Have you ever ridden your bike across California, fighting off snakes, condors, other birds of prey, wild turkeys and peacocks, stampeding goats, wild boar, deer, elk, iguanas, flies, mosquitos, 18 wheelers, tractors, planes spewing pesticides, and many other unrecognizable adversaries???’

While visiting Madison, Wisconsin in 2022, Walton reached out to Pasch with a series of strange questions.

‘Please have you ever heard or been to a place called Madison, in a frontier territory called Wisconsin?’ Walton asked.

‘I’m seeking salvation,’ looking for [Wisconsin basketball coach] Bo Ryan, trying to avoid [Governor] Scott Walker.’

Pasch described the experience of going back over the text messages as ‘cathartic,’ but couldn’t help but be sad when looking at a t-shirt he recently had made featuring a shot Walton eating a cupcake without bothering to extinguish a burning candle.

‘Made this shirt to wear on our final broadcast, which sadly never happened,’ Pasch explained.

The back of the shirt read: ‘I survived 12 years with Bill Walton & all I got was this shirt.’

Of course, much of the hilarity between Walton and Pasch played out on air as the pair called Pac-12 basketball games, where the former’s long-winded diatribes were balanced by the latter’s traditional delivery.

One fan remembered a particularly funny exchange between Walton and Pasch at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

‘I stood there, at the University of Arizona lawn, coeds laughing, the sun shining, the

Mountains,’ Walton said, as remembered on X. ‘I couldn’t help but think this is a place to experiment. To explore. To see what life can offer.’

Pasch’s reply was more succinct: ‘Wildcats up [three] coming out of the Sean Miller timeout.’

Walton was also known for lending his unique brand of hyperbole to even the most mediocre basketball players.

He once described journeyman NBA forward Tony Massenberg as ‘the immortal Tony Massenberg,’ and memorably wondered where a last-place Clippers team would be without backup center Sean Rooks.

‘Rick Fox is as fine a player as there ever has been in the NBA,’ Walton dryly told his son Luke before he joined Fox’s Lakers in 2002.

A three-time NBA champion, Fox never made an All-Star team and is, perhaps, best remembered for marrying actress and singer, Vanessa Williams.

‘Bill Walton is one of those guys like [late Mississippi State football coach] Mike Leach where everyone has a favorite story and wants to share some moment of brilliance and the fact that they were wildly influential or superb in athletics is almost left to the side as fully understood with little need to expand,’ wrote the New York Times’ Benjamin Hoffman.

Arizona coach Sean Miller remembered Walton as ‘the most positive, enthusiastic, unique and funny person I have met.’

‘Bill will be missed by many people,’ Miller concluded. ‘I am certainly one of them. He made me smile every time I saw him.’