Bill Walton appreciated Syracuse’s most famous contribution to basketball, the shot clock

Hall of Fame basketball player, and popular college and NBA commentator, Bill Walton, who died Monday at the age of 71, might have been a strange addition to Syracuse’s celebration of the 24-second shot clock on March 26, 2005.

The other invited guests made much more sense being at the occasion than “The Big-Head.”

Early Lloyd and Dolph Schayes were members of the Syracuse Nationals when the team’s owner, Danny Biasone, and his general manager Leo Ferris, changed the game of basketball forever in 1954 with the invention of the shot clock.

And John Havlicek, whose frenetic style for the Boston Celtics helped them win 13 NBA championships during the the 1960s and ’70s, took full advantage of the pace and freedom that the new rule change created.

Walton, however, might have been one of the shot clock’s greatest advocates even though he benefitted little from it during his playing days.

During his time at UCLA, where he was two-time player of the year and three-time champion, the shot clock did not exist on the college level. The NCAA would not introduce it until 1985. In the NBA, where he was league MVP in 1979, leg injuries cut down on much of his speed and mobility.

But as a passionate lover of the game and among its most enthusiastic broadcasters, the shot clock created the up-tempo sport he loved to watch and comment on.

“It was the most important rule in the history of basketball,” Walton said in Syracuse that day at the dedication of the monument to the city’s greatest contribution to sports.

“I’ve always been the biggest fan of the 24-second clock. This is one of the most important days in the history of the game because it credits the evolution, it credits the teaching, it credits the chance for people’s dreams to come true.”

In a phone conversation with The Post-Standard’s sports columnist Bob Snyder before the ceremony, Walton spoke further about how important the introduction of the shot clock was to the game he loved.

“I love the fast-break game,” Walton said, “Basketball is a celebration of life, of speed, conditioning. Playing for Coach Wooden, it was the fast break, press on defense, be in better shape. We would run, run, run.”

Walton went on to tell Snyder that the clocks used in college basketball then — 35 seconds in the men’s game and 30 second for women — were too long and thought the rule should be introduced at the high school level.

Basketball fans were excited the popular TV play-by-play man was in Syracuse.

“Him and Craig Forth are the tallest players I’ve ever seen,” 11-year-old Nate Porceng of Baldwinsville said after the 6-foot-11 Walton walked past his seat.

Walton would return to Syracuse in 2007.

He spoke in front of 700 people at the Carrier Dome on March 29 at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Syracuse.

The fact that he became an Emmy-winning analyst and public speaker was partially due to Syracuse University graduate and legendary broadcaster Marty Glickman, who took Walton under his wing and helped him overcome a debilitating stutter.

Walton wrote this for Stuttering Foundation:

“When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career.”

“The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that,” Walton added. “No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance, and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.”

Two of Walton’s early television partners were also SU alums, Dick Stockton and Mike Tirico.