Bill Walton is on the phone, and he is loose on a rhetorical stream of consciousness. No, not a stream—a torrent. He has been asked one question—“Why is college basketball experiencing a West Coast revival?”—and he is off, unbound, tripping, time traveling, rhapsodizing, soliloquizing, Waltonizing.
He goes for 10 minutes, then 15, a Jerry Garcia improvisational riff of a response to a succinct prompt. After reeling off information about teams stretching from the coastline to the southern desert to the northern forests to the inland mountains, the hippie philosopher of the sport hits his grandiose crescendo.
“This is a joyous spiritual celebration of the greatness of life,” Walton enthuses, in his mellifluous voice.