"Luke, I am your father. It's nice to meet you."

The New York Times has a piece about Bill Walton’s recovery from back surgery.  Walton’s back pain had gotten so bad that he pondered suicide, and is just now starting to “climb back into the game of life.”

Walton climbing back into the game of life means that he’s back to kicking knowledge — and hyperbole — about basketball.  He shows that he still knows his stuff… well, kinda.

When the subject was his health, Walton was generally solemn and measured. When the conversation turned to basketball, he was as energetic and opinionated as ever.

Walton predicted that the Boston Celtics would beat Cleveland and Orlando to make the finals. He called the Celtics’ Rajon Rondo the best point guard in the East, and said the Lakers’ Pau Gasol was “the best big man in basketball today.” He said LeBron James should play for free, to allow his team to surround him with better talent.

So, how right was Walton?

Rajon Rondo the best point guard in the East:

Check.  I don’t think this can even be argued at this point.  How could you, when Rondo can be utterly dominant offensively (especially in the playoffs) and is also on the NBA’s First Team All-Defense? Some nitwits might say Derrick Rose, but Rose can’t hold a candle to Rondo’s impact on the defensive end.

The Boston Celtics will beat Cleveland and Orlando to make the finals:

I hope.  During the regular season, you would have had to be mentally deficient to make this argument.  But now, as the Celtics turn on the after-burners in the playoffs, it is seeming more and more like a legitimate possibility.

Pau Gasol is “the best big man in basketball today”:

Well yeah, he’s the best big man in basketball… if you don’t consider Dwight Howard to be a big man.  Additionally, one could make the argument that Pau isn’t as good as Tim Duncan, Amare Stoudemire, or Brian Scalabrine (just kidding with Scal.)  Dirk Nowitzki, either, if you consider him a big man.  And Chris Bosh is no slouch.  Even if you think Gasol is better than all those other guys (and he might be — he’s damn good), no way he can touch Howard.  Howard is too dominant defensively.

Lebron James should play for free:

In a perfect world, you’d like to think superstars making in excess of $90 million in endorsements alone should think about playing for free — or at least less than the max — to help their teams build around them.  Of course, it will never happen.  Not in a million years.  I’m not saying it should happen, either: It’s tough to leave $20 million or so per year on the table.

As for the rest of the NY Times piece about Walton, continue reading at your own risk.  If you keep reading the rest, you might actually start to like Luke Walton, and  I know none of you want that.

Walton contemplated suicide because of a bad back.

Once upon a time, Bill Walton teamed with the Original Big Three to form perhaps the most devastating front line in NBA history and, arguably, the best team in NBA history.  A year after the 1986 Boston Celtics won 67 games and an NBA championship, though, Walton’s recurring foot problems returned and he was never the same.  Those damn feet derailed a career that, when Walton won the ’77 Finals MVP in his mid-twenties and the league MVP the following year, seemed destined for utter greatness.

Decades later, it is odd that Walton’s back — no longer his feet — causes the majority of his pain.  Walton’s bad back, says Walton, nearly drove him to suicide 14 months ago.  After successful surgery performed by Dr. Steven Garfin (“Dr. Garfin saved my life — a great man,” Walton says), Walton is starting to enjoy life again. (San Diego Union-Tribune)

“I’m getting back into the game of life,” Walton, throwing both of his long arms in the air, was saying as we sat outside his San Diego home. “I have a new life now. It got to the point where my life wasn’t worth living. I was standing on the edge of the bridge, figuring it was better to jump than to go back to where I was.”

Though Walton now feels better, he will never be pain-free.  Still, he had to have the surgery because he couldn’t move.

“There were four incisions, four 4-inch bolts, two titanium rods and a cage that holds it all together and spacers in between the vertebrae,” he said. “It was the hardest thing I’ve had to go through, much more difficult than all my other surgeries combined. It’s come so far, the evolution of back surgery, and doctors constantly are improving.

“I can’t describe the pain. Think of being submerged in a tub of boiling acid with an electrified current running through it. That would be nothing. People who haven’t had that nerve pain can’t know. It’s debilitating, excruciating, unrelenting. I had to eat lying on the floor, flat on my stomach.

“It was not an elective surgery. I couldn’t even crawl. No drug worked. I tried everything — acupuncture, yoga, massage. You name it, I did it. But I got lucky and found Steve Garfin, and now I’m finding a better way back to help people. How can you begin to thank Steve Garfin and NuVasive, getting me back in the saddle one more time? A new life, at 57.”

The pain sounds brutal, but now Walton has a new lease on life.

(h/t TrueHoop)