UCLA Basketball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Looks Back on Friendship, Rivarly with Bill Walton

Former UCLA Bruins center Bill Walton, a two-time NCAA champion and three-time National College Player of the Year with the program under storied head coach John Wooden, passed away of colon cancer on May 27. He was 71.

Walton was a colorful character on the court and off it. A devout Grateful Dead fan, he was prone to wonderfully lyrical, fanciful descriptions of action on the hardwood during his second career as a commentator. On the floor, meanwhile, he was a lethal defender and a stunningly good passer for his position, perhaps the best in the game until the arrival of Nikola Jokic. He was severely snakebitten by major foot injuries, which hampered his NBA run, but they didn’t really afflict him in college.

During his three seasons leading the team (freshmen weren’t permitted to play with the varsity squads back then), Walton led the Bruins to two consecutive 30-0 undefeated seasons, in 1971-72 and 1972-73, plus a still-solid 26-4 run in 1973-74.

He posted career averages of 20.3 points on 65.1 percent field goal shooting, 15.7 rebounds and 5.5 assists a night.

For all his efforts, Walton was only the second-best player in UCLA history. The first, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, never overlapped with him in school, but they became fast friends off the floor… before becoming rivals on it.

Abdul-Jabbar, himself a three-time NCAA champ at UCLA, took to his Substack to pen a lengthy tribute to Walton.

“Bill was like a younger brother to me,” Abdul-Jabbar revealed. “At first, like many brothers, our relationship was purely competitive. He was determined to prove that he was as good a basketball player as I was, maybe even better. To his credit, there was not a harder-working athlete. Like Kobe Bryant, he was willing to do whatever it took to reach the next level of play. He was always pushing the limits of his abilities. I was equally determined to prove that I was and always would be better. No younger upstart crow was going to knock me from my perch. We were both centers which we took to mean center of attention. Well, we were in our twenties and that kind of stuff mattered then.”

“Bill and I especially bonded over our love for Coach Wooden. Though Coach Wooden disapproved of both Bill and my antiwar politics, he approved of us being passionate about doing something we thought would make the world better. That was his most important lesson to us. Outside of our parents, Coach Wooden had been the most influential person in both our lives. We both maintained a close friendship with Coach Wooden until his death,” Abdul-Jabbar noted. “Despite my grief, there is much joy in knowing that Bill can still make me happy. And always will. In life, that is the only legacy that matters.”

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