The Bone of Contention

A basketball giant ends his career in injury and litigation

When he could play, Bill Walton was the Man Mountain of basketball, a flame-haired, 6-ft. 11-in., 225-lb. human wall beneath the basket. The true measure of his greatness was the glint in his eyes, the concentrated, almost maniacal fury that burned when he leaped to block a shot or scanned the floor before rifling an outlet pass on a fast break. That intensity made Walton one of the finest and most feared centers of his generation.

At U.C.L.A., he carried the Bruins to two national championships in three years. Yet when he joined the Portland Trail Blazers as the top pick of the draft, the dream began to unravel. Walton was plagued by injuries and played just part of his first two seasons. Caught up on the fringes of radical politics, he was questioned by the FBI when it was suspected that one of his friends had harbored Patty Hearst during her days as a fugitive. Introspective and reclusive in a world of exhibitionists, Walton was a vegetarian who preferred a lumberjack's wool shirts to superfly fur coats.

Through it all, he retained his aura of great promise. In 1976-77, Walton's only season free of injuries, he took the Trail Blazers to the league championship and won the Most Valuable Player award in the playoffs. The following year, Portland again jumped off to an early lead. But midway through the season, Walton broke the tarsal navicular bone in his left foot, just under the ankle. Though hobbled, he returned for the playoffs.

Walton has subsequently charged in a lawsuit that the Trail Blazers' doctor injected him with pain-killing drugs to enable him to play, thus aggravating his injury. A long and fruitless rehabilitation began.

When his contract with Portland expired in 1979, Walton signed with the San Diego Clippers for an estimated $750,000 a year. Though assured that his injury had healed, the Clippers took no chances: they secured a $1.25 million insurance policy on their fragile star from member companies of Lloyd's of London. When Walton began the 1979 exhibition season, he developed a crippling pain in his left foot. It was discovered that he had rebroken the same tarsal navicular bone. He came back to try again in early 1980, went up for a rebound -- and injured the bone yet again. Walton made a final attempt at taking to the court during training camp last fall, but the pain in his foot was so severe that, at last, Walton, his doctors and the Clippers faced an all too obvious fact: at 28, Bill Walton would not play basketball again.

Ironically, Walton's fate might easily have been prevented years ago. He was born with high arches and a left heel bone that does not allow his foot to turn out. So when he walks or jumps, the impact is concentrated on the ball of his foot rather than being more evenly distributed. According to his physician and adviser, Dr. Ernie Vandeweghe, a former N.B.A. player, such conditions are often repaired when a youngster reaches adolescence. Says Vandeweghe: "But by that time, Bill was already a pretty valuable commodity, already on his way to stardom. And he never complained about the pain. He lived and played throughout his life in a great deal of pain. He didn't know that having his feet hurt wasn't normal."

Walton underwent surgery Jan. 29 to correct the congenital malformation of his left foot. Meanwhile, the Clippers are suing the insurance companies for $12.5 million for failing to pay off on the policy on the grounds that it excludes injuries like Walton's. By the time his contract expires in 1985, he will have been paid approximately $300,000 for each of the 14 regular-season games he has played for San Diego.

The operation, a Clippers spokesman said, will not make it possible for him to play basketball again. It is too late for that. Instead, the spokesman said "the surgery was just to help him live his life without pain every time he takes a step."

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