As Charles Barkley said, the world is not as good without Bill Walton. But what would Bill Walton have been without Skip Bayless?
Walton died earlier this week at the age of 71 following a prolonged bout with cancer. In the ensuing days, countless sports fans and media members have shared stories of how Bill Walton helped them, while Skip Bayless reminds us that he helped Bill Walton.
On the latest episode of The Skip Bayless Show podcast, the Undisputed host recalled Walton reaching out to join his Dallas sports radio show in the early ‘90s.
.@RealSkipBayless shares the story of how he helped Bill Walton start his broadcasting career pic.twitter.com/WHjxEZW1gw
— The Skip Bayless Show (@SkipBaylessShow) May 30, 2024
“I didn’t know Bill, just knew of him,” Bayless said. “And out of the blue, I got a call from Bill Walton. A message to call back Bill Walton and I certainly did. Bill seemed very different on the phone than what I remembered of him. Very humble. Very open. Very open-hearted. Told me that he was offering his services to be on my radio show all during the month of March Madness. Said he’d come on every day. Didn’t need to be paid at all, just wanted to do it because he was trying to see if he could do radio and do television because he had suffered his whole life with a stuttering problem.
“He stuttered. And the first time I spoke to him, there were a couple of catches where he stuttered a bit to me on the phone. But he said, ‘I need to do this. I want to do this. Would you give me the opportunity to do it on your show?’”
Bayless assumes his radio show wasn’t the only one Walton sought to be on at the time, but he eagerly welcomed the opportunity to have the basketball legend call in regularly.
“I was amazed at Bill Walton because we went through that whole month, day after day after day, we’d have him on for usually two segments of maybe 10 minutes each,” Bayless recalled. “Not once did Bill stutter. Not one time did he ever sort of get caught. Not once. I was amazed. He stood on his own two feet, and he spoke. It wasn’t the Bill you later became to know. He was just being analytical, Bill. But he was very well-spoken and incredibly well-prepared, and I was incredibly impressed with Bill Walton.”
According to Bayless, the interviews with Walton occurred during his daily evening sports radio show on KLIF in 1990. Walton began working as an analyst for CBS in 1990. Bayless may have been one of the first platforms to give Walton an outlet. But it’s hard to imagine the Basketball Hall of Famer, who became one of the most revered analysts in sports history, wouldn’t have eventually found his way.
