Remembering Bill Walton and the Friars who shined alongside him in "The Breaks of the Game"

The passing of Bill Walton left me thinking not only of my earliest memories of watching basketball (with Walton on the 1986 Celtics), but of all the terrific stories in Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam’s great book The Breaks of the Game.

This masterpiece is essentially perfect in terms of sports writing and storytelling. Halberstam chronicled not only the Portland Trail Blazers shortly after Walton lost trust in their medical staff and forced his way out of town, but his book was coincidentally, and amazingly, written at a crossroads in NBA history — when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were entering the NBA as rookies, while the league was in the earliest stages of a shifting balance of power, as tv money made it so that contract negotiations started to favor players instead of organizations. Halberstam details the challenges that faced the league at the time — sagging television ratings, racial tension, drugs, inept owners — and the book is filled with interesting tidbits about some of the biggest stars in the game and other players who faltered and never reached their potential.

The Breaks of the Game is an essential read for any basketball fan, but for those who follow Providence basketball there is terrific insight into just how important Friars like Lenny Wilkens, Marvin Barnes, and Ernie DiGregorio were at the time. Halberstam writes of how Wilkens broke barriers as both a player and a coach, and of how the peers of Barnes marveled at his pure talent.

Here are some of my favorite Friar-related excerpts from what Bill Simmons called “the greatest sports book ever.”

Steve “Snapper” Jones on Marvin Barnes:

There had been a story in the paper the previous day about Marvin Barnes, known as “Bad News” or, more intimately, “News,” perhaps the greatest head case of all in recent basketball history, a man of talent equaled only by his capacity to self-destruct. “Marvin comes, Marvin goes,” Jones said. “Marvin signs, Marvin unsigns.” The report had been that Marvin was going to sign with San Diego. “I’m here to help my man, Bill.” Jones said doing an imitation of Barnes. “So the next morning Walton is looking up for his man, and his man is probably gone. Saddest story in basketball. Most talented player I ever saw come into the game. He’s blown it all, and it’s all gone, but I never saw a better player than Marvin Barnes when he came into the league. As quick as Walter Davis. The rebounding instincts, timing, and strength of Moses Malone. Could shoot like Marques Johnson. Marvin broke every rule there was, sometimes I think he studied the rules just so he could break them. He was his own worst enemy. Anything he had, and he had a lot in those days, he gave away. Stayed up all night to five o’clock, six o’clock. Always late to practice. Always being fined…

“One time we’re supposed to fly to Virginia and Marvin misses the plane. We’re at the airport and it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and he’s not there, so the coach calls him at home. Wakes him up. ‘You’re not going to make the plane,” says the coach. ‘News will catch one later,’ Marvin says. He goes back to sleep. The coach calls again. ‘There is no later one,’ the coach says. So Marvin goes back to sleep another time, wakes up about five o’clock, charters a plane to Virginia. We’re in the locker room, the game is about to begin, and who comes in with the biggest pimp’s hat you ever saw, a mink coat that must have cost $10,000 and underneath that his basketball uniform? Marvin! He’s eating a Big Mac and stuffing fries down his throat. ‘Have no fear,’ he said. “News is here.’ That night he goes out and scored maybe forty-nine points and maybe gets twenty-five rebounds. He was so good, his body was so strong, he thought it would last forever, that he could do anything he wanted to his body, keep whatever hours he wanted, put anything inside him he wanted and there would be no price. Too much damn natural talent, maybe it all came so easily to him he never took it seriously.”

Bill Walton on Marvin Barnes and his legal troubles:

“Marvin’s the last innocent,” Walton said. “If there were six people in a car and they had drugs and Marvin had met them only a few hours earlier and the police came after the car, Marvin would tell them to give him the coke and the gun so that he could hold them when the cops arrived.”

On Lenny Wilkens’ coaching style:

Wilkens, by contrast, rationed his emotions. He did not want to lose his own dignity and he did not want his players losing theirs. We will not, his face, his style, aways so cool, seemed to say, be pulled down to your level. He would, provoked by a call of the most dubious origin at the most vital moment, show a slight condescension, his eyes rising to the ceiling… Sometimes the silent ceiling gaze could strike doubt into the heart of those refereeing: was Lenny, already widely regarded as the closest thing in the league to a saint, actually communing with God?

On Marvin and Ernie D at the tryouts for the 1972 Olympic team:

“They were funny about blacks,” (Jim) Brewer was saying. “Iba, Mister Iba (Brewer smiled every time he said Mister), said right at the beginning that they were not going to have any of this dipsy-do stuff. I think that meant blacks and Ernie D (Ernie DiGregorio, a white player whose flashy style was more in the tradition of black basketball than white.)

“I think there was a quota there,” (Kermit) Washington said. “So many whites. So many blacks. They kept some good players off that team.”

Brewer agreed. “They kept Marvin off.” Marvin was Marvin Barnes, a black player of legendary talent and regrettably even more legendary ability to waste it. “Marvin tore that camp apart. The best player in the entire place. He was quick and strong. They thought he was too physical in practice. He beat up Tommy McMillen a lot and they didn’t like that because Tommy was white and very young, a big hero in the press and the press wanted Tommy to make the team. They did not like Marvin. He had all the ability and he knew he had all the ability and he didn’t pay too much attention to giving the coaches a lot of respect and they were coaches who put a lot of value on getting respect from players. Marvin was never very big on respect. He always figured the person he would respect was the person who could stop his game.”

On Bill Walton’s reaction to Wilkens getting fired as head coach of the Blazers:

On the day of the firing, Bill Walton had driven out to Lenny Wilkens’s house and abjectly apologized for his own failures and ailments. The blame for the firing, he said, belonged to him. Wilkens had told him not to worry — that the best thing he could do was stay healthy and Portland would win a championship. As a matter of fact, that is precisely what happened…

For so proud a man, the pain of the firing had not soon gone away. Wilkens was one of the pioneer blacks in professional basketball, a man who spanned several generations in terms of the sport’s racial history. All his life he had contested the racial stereotypes of American life. One of the main reasons he decided to coach was to show, by his own personal example and conduct, the difference between stereotype and reality.