NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton, who died of cancer at age 71 on Monday (May 27), was a devout Grateful Dead fan who attended more than 1,000 shows during his lifetime. After news of his death broke, several band members paid tribute to the “World's Greatest Deadhead.”
Spin-off group Dead & Company shared a statement on social media reading: “Bill was an irreplaceable force and spirit in our family. Father Time, Rhythm Devil, the biggest idiot of all time. Over 1000 shows and I couldn't get enough. “He loved this band and we loved him.”
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Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann posted their own tributes, with Weir writing, “Thank you for the wonderful friendship, the years of colorful comments, and the existence of the Hall of Fame that you held up like beacons. Have a good trip, old friend. We will surely miss you, but don't let that stop you.”
Hart described Walton as “the best friend I've ever had” in the caption of a photo of the two. “He called himself the luckiest man in the world, but we were the ones who were lucky: to meet him, to share the adventure with him,” she added. “He was the biggest Deadhead in the world and he used our music as the soundtrack to his life. After our shows, he would regularly send messages saying: 'thank you for my life.'”
Meanwhile, Kreutzmann He joked with “incredible stories” He promised to tell her about Walton only after his friend's death. “It's not that time yet because before we laugh, we must first allow ourselves to cry,” she said. “In many ways, he was our number one fan… but Bill would have disagreed with that classification because, while he won many awards in his storied basketball career, including MVP, Bill insisted that the Grateful Dead was not a competition, and that all Deadheads were equal.”
He continued: “Every time I play now there will always be a gap where there should be a seat, about ten rows back, in the center, where Bill used to stand, with his eyes closed and his arms raised, while he felt the music rushing to him. through it. That was a happy place for him and seeing him there was one of my own… I loved Bill Walton. As we say in the land of the Dead: may the four winds carry him safely home.”
In 2015, Walton compared the band to a “great basketball team” in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune. “One of the things I love most about basketball is the same thing I love about the Grateful Dead,” he said. “You go to a Dead show and there are no restrictions on what will happen. The band creates this phenomenal atmosphere, out of nowhere, and it's the same thing at a basketball game.”
Walton won two championships with the Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics during his 13-year NBA career and was named the league's Most Valuable Player in 1978. He retired after an aborted return in 1990, and had a long career. in radio broadcasting, during which he often mentioned the Grateful Dead on air.
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