Sports Illustrated has a feature up on Bill Walton, the commentator. He does a lot of west coast games and games for the Pac-12 network, which I watch a lot, and I guess this pretty much sums it up:
I love it. There was the time he gave play-by-play guy Dave Pasch a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species on air because he knew Pasch was a creationist. Or when he talked about going to a very Mormon-themed park in Salt Lake City to offer his prayers, or when he called a player "a comet soaring across the universe," or when he and Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak burned some sweetgrass together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHKG3-JwNs
He mixes excellent knowledge of the game with insane tangents with, frankly, poetic metaphors with wild enthusiasm and we are all better for listening.
It’s an acquired taste, Sullivan admits. Not everyone can handle someone as off the wall as Walton. (In the production truck during ASU-UCLA a graphics operator explains to a young assistant that “wacky tangents” are always a good time to put commentators' names on screen to remind viewers that yes, this is to be expected with this particular color analyst.) Not everyone likes it.
I love it. There was the time he gave play-by-play guy Dave Pasch a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species on air because he knew Pasch was a creationist. Or when he talked about going to a very Mormon-themed park in Salt Lake City to offer his prayers, or when he called a player "a comet soaring across the universe," or when he and Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak burned some sweetgrass together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQHKG3-JwNs
He mixes excellent knowledge of the game with insane tangents with, frankly, poetic metaphors with wild enthusiasm and we are all better for listening.