Cleveland Cavaliers veteran Luke Walton has lived an interesting life as the son of Hall of Famer Bill Walton.
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The Most Interesting Man in the NBA? Luke Walton doesn't always go around sharing stories of his past, but when he does, he prefers to talk about his talented, successful and versatile family.
Chris Morris, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Forget the old guy in the beer commercial. Luke Walton might very well be the most interesting man in the world -- or at least the NBA.
Most fans know that Walton is the son of basketball Hall of Famer and Grateful Dead superfan Bill Walton.
But did you know his mother, Susie, was a volleyball player at UCLA, who became the San Diego Parent Educator of the Year and a leading expert in family dynamics? She is an author and founder of Indigo Village, a Southern California center that offers programs in parenting and personal development, and she has been leading classes and training for more than 21 years.
"She's a saint,'' Luke Walton says.
She is also currently on an ashram in India.
Did you know his brother Nate was a captain on the Princeton basketball team and later ran for governor of California?
Did you know Luke used to drive around the University of Arizona campus in a ratty old, gold Cadillac convertible -- Arizona coach Lute Olson declined the offer of a ride -- or that when he was drafted by the Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal hooked him up with an L.A. body shop that fixed the top and painted the car candy-apple red?
Did you know he was an assistant coach at the University of Memphis during the NBA lockout?
Or that he once played himself on the soap opera "The Young and the Restless," and that video from the program showed up in Laker team film sessions for months afterward?
If Walton was writing his memoirs, which he's not, he thinks the title might be a takeoff of a TV show his father did for a while: My Long Strange Trip.
"I think that would be a good title for my book, because it's been strange,'' he said with a smile. "I don't think every kid would enjoy the childhood that I had, but I loved the childhood I had. We had freedom, but we had discipline. It was a little chaotic over there. But I enjoyed that. I wouldn't trade it.''
Basketball beginnings
Luke Walton is the third of Bill and Susie's four sons. He was born in San Diego on March 28, 1980, while his father was playing for the then-San Diego Clippers. He doesn't remember anything about those days, but he has seen a picture of himself and his brothers sitting with their dad in uniform on the Clippers bench. That did not go over well with everybody.
"When I got to L.A., Craig Hodges was the [Lakers] shooting coach,'' Walton said. "He was a rookie on that (San Diego) team. He told me he used to hate the four of us because my dad would make him sit on the floor so the four of us could sit on the bench with him.''
Walton does remember the days his father played in Boston, from 1985-87.
"My earliest memories would be when he was playing for the Celtics, going to all the home games at the Garden, going over to Larry Bird's house for dinner, running around the practice site during practice,'' he said. "They used to dare us to put shaving cream in someone's shoes -- stuff like that. Whatever Larry told us to do we would do.
"Then they banned kids from the practice facility.''
By that time, all four boys were smitten with the game. Although both parents encouraged them to explore other sports and other interests, it was basketball that captured their hearts.
"We all played,'' said Walton, who idolized Bird. "I always played the most. I played from the moment I got home until the neighbors came over and complained.''
The four boys were especially close. In fact, on his upper right arm, Luke Walton has a tattoo of four Grateful Dead-like skeletons with basketballs as a symbol of that closeness. Their parents divorced when Luke was 10, and the boys lived with their mother, but they were close to their father, too. Usually. Whenever they got mad at him, they'd tell him they were going to attend Notre Dame, which famously ended UCLA's 88-game winning streak when Bill Walton was a senior and the Bruins' big star in 1974.
Luke Walton moved in with his dad when he entered University of San Diego High School. Though Luke could have easily made the varsity team, in what is believed to be the only moment of parental interference from Bill Walton, coach Jim Tomey said the Hall of Famer asked him to bring his son along more slowly.
"I said, 'OK, but if that's the case, he's got to be the point guard on the JV,' because we'd promoted the point guard to the varsity,'' recalled Tomey, now the head coach at Francis Parker School. "So he played point guard on an undefeated JV team and handled the ball 95 percent of the time.''
Bill Walton was supportive of his sons' basketball careers but not pushy.
"He used to bring his newspaper to the games,'' Luke Walton recalled. "He'd watch the game and look up from his newspaper. He was great.
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Nate Walton in 2001 during his career at Princeton.
AP file
"Obviously, he knew more about the type of pressure we were going to be having being his kids. But he'd ask you if you wanted advice on the game. Sometimes you were mad and you didn't want to hear it from your dad. Other times you'd say yes and he'd break down what he saw and what he thought you should work on.
"But he'd always ask you first and he'd always make the point of telling us that it was our lives and not to feel obligated to play basketball. At the time, it was really annoying. I was like, 'You don't need to tell me this every day. I love basketball. It's all I want to do. I don't need you to keep telling me I don't have to do it.'
"But looking back, he was just trying to be a good dad. Obviously, he used to try to push me and my brothers to play the piano and find other interests in music and other parts of life. But for me, it was always just basketball.''
'A burning desire to win'
Nate Walton, the second oldest brother at 35 who now works in finance in San Diego, thinks that passion is what separated Luke from his brothers and is the reason why he was the only one of the four to play in the NBA, although all four played in college.
"He probably was more single-minded about basketball than the rest of us,'' Nate Walton said. "Although my dad gave us that advice, I don't think Luke took it.''
As has been the case throughout his son's career, Bill Walton, now a college basketball broadcaster, declined an interview request for this story.
"I am the proudest and luckiest dad in the whole world,'' he wrote in an email. "Please tell Luke that I love him and miss him more than ever.''
Tomey thought there were some other reasons for Luke Walton's success -- including winning a California state high school title as a senior.
"I think Luke was more talented to begin with,'' the high school coach said. "But that doesn't necessarily mean you'll make it to the NBA.
"I think the thing that separated him from his brothers was that Luke had a burning desire to win when he played. He was never a guy that loved practice, but he loved to play.
"As soon as you put up a score at practice, Luke perked up and was ready to go. I think that was an intangible he had more than the other three. Luke didn't like to lose. Luke also had the best feel for how to play with other guys. They were all good. Nathan was a wonderful basketball player, but his feel was more him figuring out his shot opportunities and scoring. Luke had a great all-court sense. If you told Luke something one time, that's all you needed to say.''
His coaches at Arizona agreed. The Wildcats went 102-27 with Walton in four seasons, losing to Duke in the NCAA championship game in 2001. In his junior season, when he averaged 15.7 points per game, he also had 194 assists, becoming the first non-guard to lead the then-Pacific 10 Conference in assists.
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Josh Pastner hired Luke Walton to be an assistant coach at Memphis when the NBA was in its most recent lockout. Pastner said when Walton was at Arizona and he was an assistant there, "You could run your entire offense through Luke. He has one of the highest IQs in the game today."
AP
"He's so cerebral,'' said Josh Pastner, a former Arizona assistant who is now the head coach at Memphis and the man who hired Walton as an assistant during the NBA lockout. "His ability to see things before it happens ... you could run your entire offense through Luke Walton. He has one of highest IQs in the game today.''
That's one of the reasons why Pastner hired Walton as an assistant, but there were others -- besides the instant credibility a two-time NBA champion brought.
"Luke's got a tremendous personality,'' Pastner said. "People are attracted to him because of his personality. He's easygoing. He's easy to talk to. He's down to earth and I think he's got a really good feel for people.''
Said Tomey, "Everybody likes Luke. He knows how to get along with people. He's genuine and honest. He's a breath of fresh air.''
That affable personality came in handy when Walton made it to the NBA, where a lot of players disliked his father because of his critical nature as a broadcaster.
"It used to get awkward in film sessions when we'd watch film and my dad would be saying some critical things about my teammates,'' Luke Walton said. "But he'd say critical things about me, too. I wasn't even his son. He'd call me 'Walton'.
"Sometimes I had teammates' moms come up to me and tell me, 'Tell your dad to leave my son alone.' I was like, 'Listen I can't control that man. He's going to do what he does.' But I've never had issues with teammates as far as it going to an uncomfortable place.''
It almost got there when he was a rookie with the Lakers after they drafted him in the second round, No. 32 overall, in 2003. Veterans Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone and Gary Payton told him in training camp they were going to make things tough on him because of things his dad had said.
"They weren't kidding,'' Walton said. "They were on me pretty hard early in training camp, but by the end of training camp we ended up all getting along really well so they told me I was lucky that I was such a good guy because they weren't going to take it out on me for what my dad had done to them. They had decided as a core group of veterans that they were going to leave me alone and not do what they had originally planned.''
The facilitator
Walton spent the next nine years in Los Angeles, winning championships in 2009 and 2010. Before injuries took their toll, he was a fixture in Phil Jackson's triangle offense, starting 60 games in 2006-07, primarily because of his ability to pass the basketball. He always was content to facilitate.
Wrote Bill Dwyre in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, "The Lakers' Luke Walton performs in Hollywood, but he isn't. In the movie world, where there is glitz and glamour, Walton is a gaffer. He lights the room so others can shine.''
He has done the same thing for the Cavs after being obtained, along with Jason Kapono and a first-round draft choice, at the trading deadline last season. Frankly, more attention was paid to the 2012 first-round pick (used to trade for Tyler Zeller on draft night) or the Cavs' right to swap their least favorable first-round pick this year with the Lakers' than to either Walton or Kapono, who was waived.
But Walton was the glue that held the Cavaliers' second unit together, before all the injuries decimated the Cavs rotation.
"I think he's done fantastic this year for us,'' Cavs coach Byron Scott said of Walton. "I got a lot more out of him than I thought we would ever get out of him."
Walton, who will marry former Arizona volleyball player Bre Ladd this summer, is in the last year of his contract. He would like to continue to play, whether here or elsewhere.
Scott thinks he still has a lot to offer.
"I thought his experience was invaluable. I thought his presence in the locker room was unbelievable. His demeanor with the guys, the way he communicates with our guys ... they've got a lot of respect for what he's gone through and what he's done.''
If they only knew the half of it.
