Two-time NBA champion Bill Walton has died at the age of 71

Two-time NBA champion Bill Walton, who dominated the hardcourt during his 13-year professional basketball career and later excelled as a sportscaster who both delighted and dismayed sports fans with his sometimes wacky, colorful commentary, has died after a “lengthy battle with cancer,” the league announced Monday.

Walton, 71, was surrounded by family when he died, NBA spokesman Mark Broussard said in a statement.

“Bill Walton was truly one of a kind,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “As a Hall of Fame player, he redefined the center position.”

Walton led the Portland Trail Blazers to an NBA championship in 1977 and won a second NBA title in 1986 as a member of the Boston Celtics.

And after a During his 13-year career on the court, Walton “translated his infectious enthusiasm and love for the game to the television broadcasts, where he provided insightful and colorful commentary that entertained generations of basketball fans,” Silver said.

Born on November 5, 1952, in La Mesa, California, Walton was a 6-foot-9 high school basketball phenom before playing for coach John Wooden and the UCLA Bruins.

There, Walton won the National College Player of the Year award three times in a row between 1972 and 1974 and helped the Bruins to NCAA championships in 1972 and 1973.

Walton was selected for the 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team, but chose not to play.

Outside of sports, Walton became one of the country’s most polarizing athletes with his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration and the FBI. He was even arrested during a war protest his penultimate year.

With his fiery red hair, colorful headbands, and flannel shirts, Walton also shattered the mold of what a college athlete should look like. He declared himself a vegetarian, practiced meditation, and became a lifelong fan of The Grateful Dead.

“Your generation screwed up the world,” he said in a statement after his arrest. “My generation is trying to fix it. Money means nothing to me. It doesn’t make me happy, and I just want to be happy.”

For Walton, being happy meant pursuing an NBA career.

Walton was selected first overall in the 1974 NBA Draft and led the Trail Blazers to the championship three years later, as well as winning the Most Valuable Player award in the NBA Finals.

In 1978, Walton won the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award.

But starting in high school, Walton was plagued by foot and leg injuries for the rest of his career, forcing him to continue playing despite the pain. He missed three seasons because of injuries that required about three dozen surgeries to repair.

At the age of 34, Walton retired after playing only 10 games in the 1986–87 season.

In his autobiography, Walton wrote that his biggest regret was playing while injured.

“I didn’t let pain guide me,” Walton wrote. “I didn’t say, ‘If it hurts a lot, don’t play.'”

But Walton wasn’t done with basketball yet.

Walton stuttered, overcame his speech impediment and became one of the country’s most famous – and sometimes controversial – basketball commentators.

Walton has commentated games for NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, Turner Sports, and most recently provided commentary for ESPN’s broadcasts of Pac-12 basketball. In 2001, Walton received an Emmy for Best Live Sports Broadcast on Television.

Over time, Walton built up a collection of offbeat sayings, some of which were compiled online by an organization called Awful Announcing.

“Come on, that wasn’t a foul,” Walton once declared midway through the game. “It may be a violation of all basic rules of human decency, but it’s not a foul.”

Walton once compared a player to a mosquito.

“If you ever think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never spent a night in bed with a mosquito or played basketball against Taylor from Utah – No. 11 in your program, No. 1 in your heart.”

Walton could also exaggerate with praise. For example:

“John Stockton is one of the true miracles, not just of basketball or America, but of the entire history of Western civilization!”

During a live broadcast of another college game in 2015, Walton asked a cryptic question: “Have you ever been milked?”

According to the NBA, Walton leaves behind his second wife Lori and his sons from his first marriage: Adam, Luke, Nate and Chris.