On Monday, Bill Walton, one of the greatest basketball players of his generation and a hippie prone to looping flights of verbal fancy, passed away at age 71 from cancer. A Grateful Dead fan who was arrested protesting the Vietnam War, Walton graced the cover of the September/October 1978 issue of this magazine. Below, you can find a version of that story: “Searching for Bill Walton.
” It documents his mercurial relationship to stardom during his heyday with the Portland Trailblazers. “Welcome to pretty little Portland,” the flight attendant says, “home of the World Champion Trailblazers.” Prominently displayed in the airport is a Trailblazer flag.
The airport bus driver can’t name her favorite player because she has four, all of whom she loves equally. We drive under a bridge emblazoned “Go Trailblazers.” The first meal I have is a Trailblazer burger.
With about 500,000 people, Portland is the smallest metropolis in the National Basketball Association, in June of 1977, some 250,000 people crowded the downtown area for the Trailblazers’ victory parade. The final playoff game the day before was, of course, sold out; scalpers hawked standing-room-only tickets for $100 each. Luckily the game was broadcast on national TV; ratings showed that 96 percent of the Oregonians turning on their sets that afternoon watched their team’s victory.
Their team. Not one of the Trailblazers was born in Oregon, or went to school or college there. The coach spent his previous .
