20 NBA Hall-of-Fame careers that were cut short by injury

NBA Hall-of-Fame career cut short: Bill Walton

It is very possible that Bill Walton would have made the Basketball Hall of Fame if he never played a minute of professional basketball. The UCLA center was a three-team national college player of the year and won two NCAA championships for the Bruins. With Walton as the centerpiece, UCLA won 88 straight games. He’s easily one of the most decorated and impactful college basketball players of all time.

It was midway through his senior season at UCLA that he took a hard fall and broke two bones in his spine, which would kick off back problems that plagued him for the rest of his career. Walton went first overall in the 1974 NBA Draft to the Portland Trail Blazers.

By his third season, Walton led the league in rebounding and blocks (a whopping 3.2 per game). Yet injuries continued to limit his availability, as he averaged just 50 games per season. The games he did play were enough to propel Portland to its first and only title in franchise history. The next season, his fourth in the league, he played in just 58 games before breaking his foot, but it was enough to earn the league’s MVP award.

Walton missed the entire next season and only played 14 games total in the next four. He slowly rebuilt his career and in his final two seasons became a sixth man for the Boston Celtics, winning a second title and one of the first Sixth Man of the Year awards. Yet in total for his career, Walton played just 468 games in total and missed four entire seasons with injury. The career he could have had if reasonably healthy would have been transcendent.