I went to my first show [of the Grateful Dead], got right up front and never left. The incredible excitement, the family, the spirit, the hope, the happiness, all the different things I love and live for in life are there.
It’s the most pleasurable experience in the world! When you’re on a great team and you get hot, your teammates milk you dry – they wear you out and there’s nothing like being on a great team.
I lived to play basketball. Growing up as a kid, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics were my favorite team. The way they played, the teamwork, the sacrifice, the commitment, the joy, the camaraderie, the relationship with the fans.
I had this fantastic collection of Grateful Dead T-shirts and live concert music the band had give me over all these years, decades of material, and when our boys became teenagers they started going through everything and wearing the shirts and listening to the music and that’s what the Grateful Dead is all about.
We can never thank David Stern enough. His vision to use basketball to improve the quality of our lives to make this world a better and saner place, that guy, is the most important man in the history of basketball.
[Peter] Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” was my first go-to song in terms of getting into the zone and getting ready and then I quickly gravitated to rock and roll music in the mid-’60s with the Grateful Dead,
![Bill Walton Quote - I went to my first show [of the Grateful Dead], got right up front and never left. The incredible excitement, the family, the spirit, the hope, the happiness, all the different things I love and live for in life are there.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/i-went-to-my-first-show-of-the-grateful-dead-got-r-683x1024.jpg)
![Bill Walton Quote - [Peter] Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” was my first go-to song in terms of getting into the zone and getting ready and then I quickly gravitated to rock and roll music in the mid-’60s with the Grateful Dead,](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/peter-tchaikovskys-1812-overture-was-my-first-go-t.jpg)