Bill Walton - Personal Life

Personal Life

Walton currently resides in his hometown of San Diego with his wife Lori. He and his first wife, Susie, have four sons: Adam, Nathan, Luke, and Chris. Luke, although not as tall as his father, played at the collegiate level for the University of Arizona and now plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers as a small forward. From 2003 to 2012, Luke played for the Los Angeles Lakers, where he won in both the 2009 and 2010 NBA Finals, making Bill and Luke the first father-son pair to have both won multiple NBA championships. Another of Walton's sons, Chris, played for San Diego State University. Nate, his middle son, played basketball at Princeton University but then entered the corporate world and earned his MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. (Bill Walton attended Stanford Law School for two years but never graduated.) Nate was on the ballot for the 2003 California Recall Election, receiving 1,697 votes. Walton's other son, Adam, also played NCAA basketball at Louisiana State University.

Walton is a well-known fan of the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young, Phish, and Bob Dylan. He attended more than 650 Grateful Dead concerts, including traveling with the band to Egypt for its famous 1978 performance before the Pyramids (joining the band on drums), quotes Dead lyrics in TV and radio interviews. To fellow Deadheads, Walton is fondly known as "Grateful Red" and the "Big Red Deadhead" and "World's Tallest Deadhead". In the video for "Touch of Grey", Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart is wearing a Celtics jacket that was given to him by Walton. In 2001, Bill Walton was inducted into The Grateful Dead Hall of Honor.

Walton expounds upon his music interests on his own satellite radio show, One More Saturday Night (named after the Dead song of the same name), heard during late prime time on Sirius Radio's Jam On and XM Radio's Grateful Dead channel. Walton has stated in his online introduction to his radio show column that he enjoys going to concerts alone because then he has fewer things in between him and reaching the omega point that all concert goers seek at shows.

Walton still has a committed relationship with the Celtics, if not professionally, as a fan. Despite the area where he grew up, and the team his son Luke plays for, Walton is careful to point out, "Even though I grew up in the heart of Laker country, the Celtics were always MY team". He keeps a picture of the floor of the old Boston Garden in his kitchen. Walton joined the Celtics broadcast crew for a West Coast road trip in 2011.

In 1990, Walton was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface.