Bill Walton’s Back Pain Made Him Contemplate Suicide
SportingNews
Few basketball players have ever been as talented or had as much bad injury luck as Bill Walton. His career will always feel like an incomplete one, even as he’s rightfully identified as one of the best big men in league history.
His injury trouble has lingered into his post-basketball life. Things got so bad, in fact, that he recently contemplated suicide because of his excruciating pain. From The San Diego Union-Tribune:
By his count, Bill Walton has undergone 36 orthopedic surgeries at various points on his 6-foot-11 frame. But if you know Walton, then you’re aware that he’s never needed an operation on his enthusiasm for life — until 14 months ago, when his pain had reached the point where he seriously wondered if he could go on.
Walton, one of the all-time-great basketball players, a man whose intelligence and enthusiasm enabled him to roll over every pothole in his past and find success in most every endeavor he’s undertaken, admits the incredible pain brought about by a bad back took him to the brink, where he contemplated taking his own life.
“I’m getting back into the game of life,” Walton, throwing both of his long arms in the air, was saying as we sat outside his San Diego home. “I have a new life now. It got to the point where my life wasn’t worth living. I was standing on the edge of the bridge, figuring it was better to jump than to go back to where I was.”
The good news is that Walton now feels better, thanks to the less invasive procedures undertaken by Dr. Steven Garfin of UC-San Diego. Walton has since become a spokesman for The Better Way Back, an organization that helps people dealing with chronic back and leg pain.
The more sensational aspects of this story are obviously quite dark, yet it’s somehow both shocking and not entirely surprising. The only time I’ve seen Walton in person, he moved like an 85-year-old man. That was roughly 15 years and many surgeries ago. When you have to deal with that kind of pain on a daily basis, you’re likely to think that life is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth.
There are a few things to take from this story beyond sympathy for Walton. The first is that, while the Big Redhead is an extreme case, professional athletes sacrifice their bodies for their craft, only to pay the price later in life. Football players have lately gotten a good deal of attention for post-retirement health issues, but it’s worth remembering that athletes in less contact-heavy sports have lingering problems, too.
This story is also a reminder that, for all his divisive work as a broadcaster, Walton is one of the most thoughtful and considerate players the league has ever seen. Taking his struggle with pain and using it to help fellow patients is exactly the kind of thing he’s done throughout his career, whether in his political activism or his work with the Stuttering Foundation (for which he was a personal inspiration to me when I stuttered badly as a child), Walton has always been someone who’s used his fame to speak out for what he believes in.
So yes, it’s noteworthy that Walton contemplated suicide. But the lesson to take from Walton’s life isn’t that we should focus on that event, but take it as a chance to help others and turn a negative into a positive.
"It was the greatest pain in the history of humankind. " - Bill Walton
"The excrutiating pain was malicious, merciless, malevolent. And suicide seemed like the greatest idea in the history of Western Civilization."
"It was a pain that would endure the sands of time. The glory and the power of the human nerve endings that caused such destruction could only be matched by the sheer dominance of Shaquille O'Neal."
"Once I got back pain, all I could do was to tell myself THROW IT DOWN BIG MAN!"
at the last few posts here. But man that sucks for Walton.
what.....no "walton thought about suicide after finding out his son is gay" comments?
I'm a big Walton-as-commentator fan... but I had to LOL at first few replies in this thread.
Well done, folks.
I have a feeling Walton himself would be able to laugh at them at this point.
This is a sore spot for you, isn't it?
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