Bill Walton, the red-headed superstar who led UCLA to 73 consecutive wins and two back-to-back championships in the early 1970s before starting an injury-marred NBA career that still saw him become an essential part of world championship teams in Boston and Portland, died at 71 years old after a long battle with cancer.

After his retirement as a player, Walton started a colorful career as a two-time Emmy-winning basketball analyst, most recently for ESPN on their Pac-12 telecasts. To do so, he had to overcome a debilitating stutter that plagued him for the first 28 years of his life. Walton told Deadline last year, “I just wish that I had learned how to speak at an earlier age. Nothing has changed my life more than learning how to speak. It’s my greatest accomplishment and your worst nightmare. I identify with everyone who faces struggles and challenges.”

Walton continued, “And when you’re a stutterer, it completely changed your life. Because you’re constantly embarrassed and reluctant and ashamed. And you have to learn to overcome it. I am no longer ashamed about being a stutterer. I’m no longer self-conscious about being a stutterer. I am a stutterer.” The first pick in the 1974 NBA Draft by Portland, who led the Trail Blazers to their only championship in the 1976-77 season and was the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1977-78, Walton was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of in 1993. He fought with foot injuries throughout his professional career and played only 468 games spread liberally over 10 seasons, missing most of five seasons and another four full seasons to injury.

While his lifetime numbers, 13.3 points and 10.5 rebounds per game, didn’t stand out, his contributions were enough to warrant him being named to the NBA’s 50thh and 75thh anniversary teams. That followed a collegiate career in which he was named the college player of the year three times while leading John Wooden’s Bruins to 73 of their record 88 consecutive victories. While first-year students were ineligible to play then, the Bruins finished 30-0 in each of his first two seasons on the varsity and 86-4 for his three-year career. In the 1973 NCAA championship game versus Memphis, Walton authored perhaps the greatest title-game performance ever when he made 21 of 22 shots from the floor and finished with 44 points in a runaway win.

Walton said in his Hall of Fame speech, “My teammates made me a much better basketball player than I could ever have become myself. The concept of a team has always been the most intriguing aspect of basketball to me. If I had been interested in individual success or an individual sport, I would have taken up tennis or golf.” He also said he considered himself fortunate to have been guided by two of the game’s greatest minds, Wooden and Celtics executive Red Auerbach.

“It’s very hard to put into words what he has meant to UCLA’s program, as well as his tremendous impact on college basketball,” UCLA coach Mick Cronin said Monday. “Beyond his remarkable accomplishments as a player, it’s his relentless energy, enthusiasm for the game and unwavering candor that have been the hallmarks of his larger-than-life personality. It’s hard to imagine a season in Pauley Pavilion without him.”

Walton underwent 39 surgeries during his career and in the years since. He was bothered by a back ailment so severe that, in 2008, it caused him to have thoughts of suicide just to be rid of the pain. Yet the 2023 docuseries about him was titled “The Luckiest Guy In The World” because that is how, despite it all, Walton saw himself.