By Mike Finger, Columnist | San Antonio Express-News, 2024-05-28 17:12:54
由生成式人工智能翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
文件 - 2024 年 5 月 27 日：据悉，篮球传奇比尔·沃尔顿于 2024 年 5 月 27 日与癌症进行了持久斗争后，在 71 岁时去世。德克萨斯州奥斯汀 - 3 月 15 日：2023 年 3 月 15 日，比尔·沃尔顿在奥斯汀会议中心的 2023 年 SXSW 会议和节日期间，“世界上最幸运的人”全球首映后参加了问答环节。德克萨斯州奥斯汀。
当这位明星要求交易时，良好的氛围已经消散。他曾是冠军的重要成员，在全世界表现得最好的情况下，看起来很可能会再次夺冠，但他的身体状况不配合。
在伤病使他无法参加季后赛后，事情变得丑陋。这位明星和他的球队在治疗问题上存在分歧。他决定退出。他长期以来一直对媒体感到敏感，这让当地球迷更加冷漠，送他走的那笔交易导致了一些近乎哀悼的事情。
俄勒冈新闻的一名记者在 1980 年波特兰开拓者队首次面对他们前任中锋的夜晚写道：“比尔·沃尔顿错过了热情”，但他接受了剩下的东西。
这句话听起来现在很可笑，即使对于我们这些太年轻而无法记住围绕沃尔顿离开波特兰的任何类似科怀·伦纳德的戏剧，或任何让他成为 NBA MVP、名人堂成员和可能是最成功的大学篮球运动员的精彩表现的人来说也是如此。
我们所知道的是，尽管没有亲眼目睹他的篮球鼎盛时期，但如果真的有热情可寻，沃尔顿很少错过。我们也十分肯定沃尔顿从未“满足”于任何事情。
随着沃尔顿在周一 71 岁去世后，来自多代人的令人捧腹的令人振奋的赞扬本周涌入，他们都提醒了我们沃尔顿比其他人更好证明了什么。
第二幕是有可能的。
而快乐值得追求。
即使在看起来苦涩的结局之后。
我希望我更像沃尔顿那样。我希望每个人都可以这样做，即使我意识到这是不可能的。很难像他对任何事情一样对任何事情都充满热情。
是的，这听起来通常像是为电视制作的小品。从 20 世纪 90 年代为全国广播公司 (NBC) 广播 NBA，再到 21 世纪初为 ESPN 广播 NBA，到他担任 ESPN 的大学篮球评论员，再到 Pac-12 网络，沃尔顿的言语夸张到了如此地步，以至于观众们确信他是在捉弄他们。
沃尔顿在一次广播中宣称：“当我看到鲍里斯·迪奥时，我想起了浪漫主义时代的贝多芬。”“这个家伙拥有了所有！”
但不管是否言不由衷，积极性是毫不懈怠的，尽管他有许多可能用作借口来回避积极性的理由。
他的辉煌篮球生涯因脚部一系列应力性骨折而脱轨，导致他接受了 30 多次手术。而且当你看到他在洛杉矶以前被称为斯台普斯中心的一个媒体室里僵硬地缓慢走动，或者冒险进入奥斯汀欧文中心的法庭席时，你会好奇他是如何走出家门的，更不用说进入球场了。
但他的广播合作伙伴、前队友和家人的所说出的每个故事都重申，沃尔顿在镜头前的举止与他一贯的为人没有区别。
本周《洛杉矶时报》的一篇讣告指出，当沃尔顿的儿子卢克为湖人队效力时，沃尔顿老人会给他孩子的手机留言，假装是一个即将到来的对手在胡说八道。沃尔顿假装自己是卡梅隆·安东尼，然后是卡洛斯·布泽尔。
“他说他想模仿蒂姆·邓肯，”卢克·沃尔顿告诉泰晤士报，“但蒂姆·邓肯不会胡扯，所以他做不到。”
即使是著名的感恩至死乐队的粉丝比尔·沃尔顿，对于他愿意在多大程度上超越现实的界限也有其局限性。一个胡扯的邓肯即使在迷幻药的影响下也是不可想象的。
但沃尔顿做到了除此之外的一切似乎可能的事情，这就是为什么许多年龄太小而无法观看他比赛的人感觉到与他如此亲密的原因。45 年前开拓者队被迫交易他时，他的篮球生涯似乎已经结束了。
事实证明，他最具影响力的职业生涯之一——如果不是最具影响力的职业生涯——仍然距离开始还有十年之遥。
沃尔顿从未公开透露自己的癌症诊断，他最后一次为 Pac-12 网络进行电视转播是在 2 月 10 日。在华盛顿州立大学和俄勒冈州立大学之间的一场比赛开始前，他听起来处于巅峰状态。
沃尔顿说：“当我们今天开始这场比赛时，有如此多的故事情节可以激发心灵和灵魂。”“想象力和好奇心，一切都就在这里。”
当良好的氛围消散近半个世纪后，他并没有失去热情。
他抓住了剩下的东西。
从未满足于此。
点击查看原文：Never missing the gusto, Bill Walton made most of second act
Never missing the gusto, Bill Walton made most of second act
FILE - MAY 27, 2024: It was reported that basketball legend Bill Walton has died at the age of 71 after a prolonged battle with cancer on May 27, 2024. AUSTIN, TEXAS - MARCH 15: Bill Walton takes part in a Q&A following “The Luckiest Guy in the World” world premiere during 2023 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 15, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
By the time the star demanded a trade, the good vibes had faded. He’d been integral to a championship, and looked poised to win another while playing as well as anyone in the world, but his body just didn’t cooperate.
After an injury knocked him out of the playoffs, things turned ugly. The star and his team disagreed about treatment. He decided he wanted out. He’d long been prickly with the media, which made local fans all the more unsympathetic, and the deal that sent him away led to something verging on mourning.
“Bill Walton missed the gusto,” a reporter for the Oregon Journal wrote on the 1980 night the Portland Trail Blazers faced their former center for the first time, “but settled for what’s left.”
That line sounds laughable now, even to those of us too young to remember any of the Kawhi Leonard-like drama surrounding Walton’s exit from Portland, or any of the on-court exploits that made him an NBA MVP, a Hall of Famer and perhaps the most accomplished college basketball player of all time.
What we know, without having witnessed his hoops heyday, is that if there ever was gusto to be found, Walton seldom missed it. We’re also pretty sure Walton never “settled” for anything.
And as side-splitting, uplifting tributes from a multitude of generations poured in this week following Walton’s death Monday at the age of 71, they all provided reminders of what Walton proved better than just about anyone.
That second acts are possible.
And that joy is worth seeking.
Even after what looks like a bitter end.
I wish I could be more like Walton was. I wish everyone could be, even if I realize that’s impossible. It’s hard to be as enthusiastic about anything as he was about everything.
Yeah, it often sounded like it had to be made-for-TV schtick. From his days broadcasting the NBA for NBC in the 1990s and for ESPN in the early 2000s, into his time as a college basketball commentator for ESPN and then the Pac-12 Network, Walton’s verbal histrionics went so over-the-top that viewers became convinced he was pulling their leg.
“When I look at Boris Diaw, I think of Beethoven in the age of the romantics,” Walton once proclaimed during a broadcast. “This guy has got it all!”
But tongue-in-cheek or not, the positivity was relentless, despite all the reasons he could have used as an excuse not to be.
His brilliant basketball career was derailed by a series of stress fractures in his foot, which led to more than 30 surgeries. And when you’d spot him stiffly lumbering through a media room at what used to be called Staples Center in Los Angeles, or venturing into his courtside seat at the Erwin Center in Austin, you’d wonder how he ever made it out of his house, let alone into the arena.
But every story told by his broadcast partners, former teammates and family members reaffirm that Walton’s on-camera demeanor was no different than who he was, all the time.
An obituary in the Los Angeles Times this week noted that when Walton’s son, Luke, was playing for the Lakers, the elder Walton would leave long messages on his kid’s phone, pretending to be an upcoming opponent talking trash. Walton pretended to be Carmelo Anthony, and then Carlos Boozer.
“He said he wanted to imitate Tim Duncan,” Luke Walton told the Times, “but Tim Duncan doesn’t talk trash so he couldn’t.”
Even Bill Walton, the noted Grateful Dead devotee, had his limits for how much he was willing to stretch the limits of reality. A trash-talking Duncan wasn’t even conceivable on psychedelics.
But Walton made everything short of that was seemed possible, which is why so many people too young to have watched him play felt such a connection to him. When the Trail Blazers were forced to trade him more than 45 years ago, it looked like his time in basketball was all but over.
It turned out, one of his most influential career stretches – if not the most influential stretch – was still a decade away from beginning.
Walton, who never publicly disclosed his cancer diagnosis, did his last TV broadcast for the Pac-12 Network on Feb. 10. In the lead-in to a game between Washington State and Oregon, he sounded like he was at his peak.
“As we tip this game off today, there are so many storylines that can just tantalize the mind and the soul,” Walton said. “Imagination and curiosity, it’s all right here.”
Almost a half-century after the good vibes had faded, he was not missing the gusto.
He seized what was left.
Never just settling for it.
By Mike Finger, Columnist, via San Antonio Express-News