Bill Walton, Kawhi Leonard and a healthier NBA

In the spring of 1978, the Blazers were 50-10. They had just defeated their Finals opponent from the previous season by 21 points and were looking like the prohibitive favorites to win the championship for the second year in a row. Bill Walton was healthy for the second season in a row, playing 58 of those 60 games, after struggling to stay on the court his first two seasons, and was leading the team in points, rebounds, assists, and blocks. But now he was no longer able to endure the pain in his lower body that had plagued him for so long.

In meetings with team doctors, Walton would point to where the pain was, attempting to describe it to them. But seemingly every time he did so, the doctors would tell him there was nothing actually wrong and that he should try to play through the pain — he couldn’t make anything worse. Walton couldn’t play through it, though, and by playing, it did get worse.

Bill Walton had gone through his college career at UCLA relatively unscathed, apart from the breaking of two bones in his spine during his senior season, but that could be written off as a freak thing rather than anything indicative of systemic issues. Despite wearing a corset, and being in tremendous pain, Walton still soldiered on and played the remainder of the season, which came to an end with a loss to the David Thompson-led North Carolina State Wolfpack in the Final Four.

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Upon entering the league, most experts believed that Walton’s knees rather than his feet were the more alarming health issue. It was his knee that he had torn up at the age of 14 when playing a game of pick-up, and, several years later, when he entered the league, Lloyd’s of London refused to offer the team insurance on his knees. However, as time went on, Bob Cook, the Portland team doctor believed that the knee problems originated with his feet, that the knee injuries were compensatory injuries caused by Walton unconsciously trying to protect his feet. Cook saw this in Walton’s unique jump, as he crouched an unusually large amount which he saw as a sign that Walton was utilizing his whole body to relieve the pain in his feet.

In late 1974, in the beginning of his rookie year, Walton reached a point where he could not run without feeling a burning pain in his foot. There was no cause he could think of, and the team doctors could not find any answers or cures themselves, which led to Walton himself and his lifestyle being seen as the cause. Walton’s long hair, his vegetarian diet, his left-leaning politics all become signs of weakness, underlying reasons he couldn’t tough it out and play through this undiagnosable pain. Eventually, Walton broke his wrist and then a bone in his leg, ending his rookie year after just 35 games. After another injury-ridden season, Walton was finally relatively healthy for his third season and the Blazers made the playoffs for the first time in team history, going on to win the NBA Finals in six games. They looked primed to contend for many years — a young and talented team with only one rotation player over 27 years old. In spite of appearances, it was not to be.

As Walton continued his career in Portland, he still felt intense pain in his feet, but no one could find the source of it. It seemed like a phantom injury and many wondered if Walton’s struggles were more mental than physical. The team attempted to downplay the seriousness of his injuries by perpetually saying his status was day-to-day, which annoyed Walton to no end. It was something he would never forgive the front office for.

The team was desperate to have its franchise player back in action, the player who had led them to a championship so recently. They took him to a hypnotist and a faith healer, but even as Walton and the healer stood knee-deep in the Willamette River and the healer chanted “You’re healed, you’re healed, your feet are feeling great,” with Walton’s hands in his, the pain in his feet remained unbearable.

It seemed like a curse, but really it was no more than bad luck — bad luck that a player this preternaturally and uniquely gifted had a body so ill suited to the sport he excelled at as well as anyone in the world. Dr. James Nicholas, a doctor who had treated Joe Namath, after looking at Walton’s lower body told him, “You don’t belong in this league, young man.”

After missing the final 22 games of the 1977-78 season, Walton gutsily suited up for the first game of the Playoffs against the Seattle Supersonics. He put up 17 and 10, although the Blazers still lost by nine. Walton was still in agony, barely able to move, but the team doctors continued to tell him that he was fine and couldn’t make things any worse. Finally, desperate for a solution, Walton, who had long rejected the use of painkillers, finally accepted some from a doctor who injected a syringe full of xylocaine into his leg, and the pain vanished for the first time in months.

Yet, something felt wrong and Walton only played fifteen minutes, going to the hospital after the game. Team doctors remained optimistic that he would be available for Game 3, although the radiologists at the hospital, after looking at his X-rays, felt very differently — the navicular bone in Walton’s foot was entirely split in half. Walton justifiably believed that Portland had mismanaged his injury, both by not taking his pain seriously enough, and by encouraging him to play through it, made it exponentially worse. Bill Walton would only play 14 games over the next four seasons, and would never play another game for Portland.

From Dec. 12, 2017 to Jan. 13, 2018, Kawhi played what would be his final nine games as a Spur. He started all nine games, but only appeared in every other game and his minutes were limited. Still, something was off. He was not as effective as the All-NBA player we had seen the last two years; his 3-point shot was not there and he just looked a few steps slower. After his ninth game, he decided to shut himself down. Over the All-Star Break, it was revealed that Leonard was seeking second opinions in New York and Popovich said that he did not expect Leonard to return that season even as it was reported that, despite being cleared to play, he was choosing to sit. The next month, Leonard had told the media that his pain was “hard to explain,” but that he would play if he could. It was not recalcitrance that was keeping him off the court, but pain. However, just 16 days later, Tony Parker exacerbated tensions by saying that his injury was “100 times worse” than Leonard’s was, implying that Leonard was not as tough or committed to playing as he should be.

This kind of disagreement was certainly shocking, but in hindsight, it maybe shouldn’t have been. Kawhi’s camp and the Spurs could never even agree on the nature of his injury, with the former claiming it was ossification while the latter believed it to be tendinopathy. Complicating this disagreement is that each issue requires different treatment methods. While the Spurs were troubled by not having Kawhi’s medical care in their hands, Leonard and his camp were equally troubled by the Spurs insistence on treating it a certain way and that Kawhi could play if he wanted to. These back and forths eventually turned into the Spurs implicitly critiquing Leonard himself, as the franchise appeared to be saying that Leonard was just not committed to playing through pain or taking the steps they deemed necessary to get him back on the court. These disagreements, along with the seeming barbs at Leonard’s character and toughness were enough to deteriorate the relationship so much that he began to want out

While the details of Kawhi Leonard’s falling out with the Spurs remain murky, there are still some immediate similarities to Bill Walton’s break up with the Blazers forty years ago that may help us to make sense of what happened. Much like the saga between Walton and the Blazers in 1978, there was disagreement between the star player and the team about the nature of their pain and whether they could still play in spite of it. Both teams believed the player could indeed play and were frustrated by their seeming refusal to do so. Thankfully, Leonard did not exacerbate his injury by being compelled to play by the team as Walton did in the 1978 playoffs, but the disagreements regarding treatment, along with the criticisms coming from the Spurs organization, were enough to erode his trust regardless.

Perhaps the biggest difference between these two scenarios, and also one of the biggest changes in the league as a whole over the past amount years, is the amount of power held by the players. Following the 1976 settlement of the Oscar Robertson suit, free agency nominally existed, but the elimination of the reserve clause did not open the floodgates of player movement as one would think. The NBA allowed players to leave their current team once their contract expired, however they required the team the player left to receive compensation from that player’s new team. For example, when the New Orleans Jazz signed Gail Goodrich in the summer of 1976 from the Lakers, they were required by the league to give up three first-round picks — one of which became Magic Johnson. And when Walton left the Trail Blazers as soon as his contract expired in 1979 to join his hometown Clippers, the team he joined was decimated as they immediately had to send Kermit Washington, Kevin Kunnert, and their next year’s first-round pick to the Blazers. It was not until 1988 that unrestricted free agency truly came into being when Tom Chambers left the Sonics for the Suns, without the Suns having to offer Seattle any compensation.

Now, players are able to determine their own destiny through free agency among other ways. While Walton was compelled by team doctors to play, by taking painkillers that he was resistant to use, Leonard was able to look out for his long term future by sitting out the season until he felt ready to play again. Although Leonard had no say in what team he was able to join this offseason as his contract had yet to expire, next summer he will have the option to sign with any team in the league without them having to worry about giving up valuable picks or players in order to acquire him. All of these changes which allow the players more power to determine their own destiny are positive developments, and even more so if they allow a generational talent like Kawhi Leonard to stay healthy as opposed to being pushed to play, exacerbating pre-existing injuries similar to what happened with Walton.

After signing with the San Diego Clippers in the summer of 1979, Walton only played 14 games in his first three seasons with the team and was never the same franchise defining player he had been in 1977 and 1978, due to those recurring foot injuries. Hopefully, Leonard’s time in Toronto is not nearly as injury plagued as Walton’s in San Diego and he can regain the MVP-level of play he had his last two full seasons in San Antonio. While a fresh start for Walton was not enough to overcome his injuries, perhaps moving to Toronto, along with continued treatment, will be enough for Kawhi to find his old form, allowing him to reassert himself as one of the best players in the NBA once again.