Bill Walton is one of the great flakes in sports history. He didn’t really let his freak flag fly until he got into broadcasting and people began to realize that literally anything could come out of his mouth.
Larry Bird was not a flake. He was relentlessly focused on basketball and nothing but.
When Red Auerbach signed him to the Celtics in 1985, it was widely seen as foolish. Walton had a maddening history of injuries that really derailed his career. He later said that he bombed Boston’s physical but Auerbach asked him: Walton, can you play or not?